Antigua-US WTO gambling case

Antigua and Barbuda challenged United States restrictions on cross-border online gambling at the World Trade Organization (dispute DS285). The panel report circulated in November 2004 and the Appellate Body report in April 2005 found that US measures breached its GATS market-access commitments, though the US could invoke a public-morals defence it ultimately failed to apply consistently.

Antigua argued that US laws blocking its licensed operators from serving American customers violated commitments the US had made under the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The WTO broadly sided with Antigua on market access, while accepting that restrictions could in principle be justified on public-morals grounds, a defence the US failed to satisfy because of inconsistencies such as its treatment of domestic remote betting. The United States did not bring its measures into compliance, and Antigua was later authorised to suspend around 21 million dollars a year of US intellectual-property rights. The case remains a landmark in the clash between national gambling prohibition and international trade law.

It was the first major test of whether national online-gambling bans could survive international trade law.