The United States has suffered a new setback in a four-year legal battle with Antigua and Barbuda over U.S. restrictions on Internet gambling, a U.S. trade official said.
At issue is an April 2005 World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. prohibitions on online horse-race betting. Since then, the U.S. Congress has passed additional legislation to ban betting over the Internet.
Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, confirmed Thursday the press reports that a WTO panel “did not agree with the United States that we had taken the necessary steps to comply” with that ruling.
At the same time, Hamel downplayed the decision contained in a preliminary, confidential report to the two parties.