- The released text does not bar designated contract markets from listing any sports or casino-game contracts, the association says.
- The text also lacks language confirming that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and state gaming laws are not preempted.
- With 53 Republican seats, cloture needs seven votes from outside the GOP conference to reach 60.
- Association Chairman David Bean said tribes view enactment as the biggest threat to their sovereignty in a generation.
WASHINGTON – The final CLARITY Act text Senate Republicans released late Sunday still does not bar federally registered exchanges from listing sports and casino wagering contracts, the Indian Gaming Association said Monday in telling member tribes to press senators to reject Tuesday afternoon’s 60-vote cloture test on the bill.
A Vote On Text Tribes Already Rejected
The final draft came from Sens. Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott, whose Monday release counts 126 substantive changes Democrats asked for during more than a year of talks. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act sets regulatory guidelines for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over digital assets.
The House passed the bill 294-134 in July 2025. John Thune, the Senate majority leader, filed for cloture in August and set Tuesday’s 2:15 p.m. vote. Sens. John Curtis and Adam Schiff filed a separate bill in March to bar sports and casino contracts on CFTC-supervised platforms, a Senate bipartisan push on the prediction-market boom that the tribes now want written into the CLARITY Act itself.
What The Bill Doesn’t Say
The association, the national trade group for tribal casinos, told member tribes Monday to call senators and demand a no vote on cloture. The alert says the group has spent months asking senators to write in a ban on every form of sports and casino-style wagering via prediction markets, plus a clause saying the bill preempts no tribal, state or federal law, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act among them. Bean said the changes Lummis released do not address those concerns. Tribes will keep urging no votes, he said, until the text says tribal and state gaming law, IGRA included, “are not preempted by federal commodities law, and that DCMs are not permitted to list contracts on sports betting or casino games.”
Indian Country would “view its enactment as the greatest threat to Tribal Sovereignty in a generation,” Bean said, adding that the measure leaves the CFTC unchecked and quoting a description of it as the agency’s largest grant of power since Dodd-Frank in 2010. He said the agency is violating tribal and state laws by allowing gaming on platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Those platforms list sports contracts in states without legal sports betting of their own.
Twelve Senators Singled Out
The alert asks tribal leaders to contact 12 senators directly: Democrats Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, Ben Ray Luján, Adam Schiff and Angela Alsobrooks, and Republicans Josh Hawley, Mike Rounds, John Hoeven, James Lankford, Jerry Moran, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
What Happens Next
Should Tuesday afternoon’s cloture vote succeed, the senators’ release says, their text goes to the floor as a substitute amendment. The association told members the Senate may sit for two more weeks and both chambers leave by month’s end for the November elections, calling the cloture vote tribal governments’ final opportunity to oppose prediction-market sports betting in the 119th Congress.
