Maryland Sweepstakes Laws: Two Landslides, One Committee, No Statute
Maryland’s House voted to shut the sweepstakes model down twice in one week — 135–1 and 105–24. Both bills then went to the same Senate committee, got their hearings, and were still sitting there when the session ended in April. No state came closer to a ban in 2026 without enacting one.
| Sweepstakes-casino ban | None in force. Two 2026 bills passed the House by wide margins and died without a Senate floor vote |
|---|---|
| The two vehicles | HB 1226, the Maryland Illegal Online Gambling Enforcement Act (House 135–1, 10 March 2026), and HB 295, Gaming — Prohibition on Interactive Games (House 105–24, 8 March 2026) |
| Where both died | The Senate Budget and Taxation Committee — referred 23 March, heard 31 March and 1 April, no vote taken before the session ended |
| Watch | The January 2027 refile window. Margins of 135–1 do not usually stay unenacted for long |
| Prize-promotion filing | None. Maryland is not one of the three registration states — that list is New York, Florida, and Rhode Island |
Two bills, one week, one grave
Maryland’s 2026 session produced not one sweepstakes vehicle but two, moving in parallel.
HB 295 came first — “Gaming — Prohibition on Interactive Games and Revenue From Illegal
Markets” — passing the House 105–24 on 8 March. It paired a prohibition on interactive
games with a mechanism aimed at the licensed industry itself: gaming licensees would annually
report business relationships with anyone known to support the prohibited games, and the State
Lottery and Gaming Control Commission could deny or revoke licences over them. Pressure on the
supply chain through the licence register, rather than through the criminal courts.
HB 1226 followed two days later — the “Maryland Illegal Online Gambling Enforcement Act,”
passed 135–1 on 10 March. Its method is enforcement authority: a prohibition on knowingly
operating, offering, promoting, or supporting illegal online gambling, with the Attorney General
and prosecuting attorneys handed the tools to act on it.
Both crossed to the Senate on 23 March. Both were referred to the Budget and Taxation
Committee. Both got hearings — 31 March and 1 April. And that is where the official record
stops: no committee vote, no floor vote, and a session that ended in mid-April with both bills
still in the same room. A single Senate committee absorbed the near-unanimous will of the House
twice, without ever formally rejecting either bill.
What an unenacted landslide means
The honest status of Maryland is “open,” and this tracker records it that way. But open does
not mean undecided. A 135–1 House vote is about as close to a legislative consensus as
American politics produces, and bills with that kind of margin tend to return until they pass.
The 2027 session’s filing window opens in January; whether the refile clears Budget and Taxation
is the only genuinely open question, and nothing in the 2026 record explains why it stalled —
committee inaction leaves no reasoning behind.
Operators reading Maryland as a safe market because no statute exists are reading the same
record this tracker reads and reaching the opposite conclusion. The likelier reading: Maryland
is a state whose ban is pending an act of scheduling, not an act of persuasion.
illegal online gambling — play for something of value. HB 1226 prohibits operating or
supporting illegal online gambling; HB 295 polices revenue from prohibited interactive games.
Flickloot takes in no revenue and pays out no value: Gold Coins cannot be bought, won, redeemed,
transferred, or exchanged, so there is no wager, no prize, and no revenue stream for either
mechanism to trace. As everywhere on this tracker, the bills do not exempt the model — they never
engage with it. If the 2027 refile changes the definitions, this page changes in the same week.
Sources
- Verified HB 1226 (2026 RS), “Maryland Illegal Online Gambling Enforcement Act” — the General Assembly’s own record at mgaleg.maryland.gov: first reading 11 February, House third reading passed 135–1 on 10 March, Senate referral to Budget and Taxation 23 March, hearing 31 March, no further action recorded.
- Verified HB 295 (2026 RS), “Gaming — Prohibition on Interactive Games and Revenue From Illegal Markets” — the same source: House third reading passed 105–24 on 8 March, Senate referral to Budget and Taxation 23 March, hearing 1 April, no further action recorded; cross-filed with SB 112; licensee-reporting mechanism from the bill synopsis.
- Probable That the 2026 regular session adjourned sine die on 13 April 2026, killing both bills in committee — the constitutionally fixed 90-day session end, consistently reported; the adjournment itself has not been read from an Assembly document here.
- Unverified Why Budget and Taxation took no vote on either bill. Committee inaction is recorded nowhere, and any explanation in circulation is inference.