In 2015, West Flagler applied for a summer jai alai permit based on the handle from 2012 and 2013 after Hialeah Park Race Track did not seek to convert its permit to a summer jai alai permit.
But gambling regulators rejected West Flagler’s application, arguing that the statute only allowed the granting of a new summer jai alai permit based on “the two consecutive years next prior to filing an application.”
Because West Flagler’s application was filed in 2015, “your application is incapable of being approved,” the Division of Pari-mutuel Wagering wrote to John Lockwood, a lawyer representing the pari-mutuel, in September 2015.
But, siding with Lockwood’s arguments Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal found that the language in the statute regarding the “two next years prior” only applied to pari-mutuels that want to convert their permits to summer jai alai permits, not to pari-mutuels seeking new permits.
The “plain meaning” of the law “creates two separate ways for permittees to obtain a summer jai alai permit,” and “the Division’s conflation of these two distinct permit opportunities improperly imposed unrelated timing requirements on the ‘new permit’ language,” Judge Harvey Jay wrote in a six-page opinion joined by judges Timothy Osterhaus and Allen Winsor.
