South Carolina to Rewrite Poker Law?

Filed in archive Poker on January 8, 2007

Recreational poker players in South Carolina may soon be able to enjoy their favorite pastime without fear of the SWAT team breaking down their doors, if a charleston-area lawmaker has his way about it.

Representative Wallace Scarborough is drafting legislation to legalize in-house poker games, as long as they are considered "recreational activity." Current South Carolina laws, which are over 200 years old, prohibit any game using cards or dice, whether a wager is made or not. Technically, I think my junior high Monopoly games should have had the fuzz raiding my house every weekend! Scarborough has called these laws "ridiculous" in multiple media outlets, and is seeking to have the laws changed.

The law seeks to make friendly home poker games legal, but is not intended to legalize for-profit poker games or card rooms. There have been several high-profile cases in South Carolina in recent years where small neighborhood games were raided under the existing laws, including a recent raid in Mount Pleasant, where police seized not only money on the table in a small game, but also confiscated over $6,000 from players' wallets and purses, and money from other rooms of the house that was clearly never involved in the game.

Scarborough understands that his poker proposal will face a difficult struggle in the conservative South Carolina legislature, and that much of it may come from his fellow Republican lawmakers. "I'm going to have a million people against it," he said.

Information for this article courtesy of Online-Casinos.