HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania lawmakers say they’re waiting for the state’s highest court to decide whether skill games are legal before they once again attempt to regulate and tax the machines.
Slot-like skill games exist in a legal gray area and have proliferated across the state in taverns, gas stations, and corner stores. They are one of the legislature’s top contenders for new taxes to raise revenue for transit, education, and other budgetary needs.
Leaders tried to reach a deal on skill games last year, but were stymied by warring gaming interests and lawmakers’ conflicting allegiances to them, particularly in the Republican-led state Senate.
This time around, the GOP senators most supportive of an aggressive tax on the skills industry are newly emboldened, after three members of the caucus survived bruising primaries in which skill games interests spent heavily to unseat them.
Four Capitol lobbyists said the wins could provide political ammunition to Republican leadership as they negotiate a deal that could pass their divided caucus. Still, state Sen. Camera Bartolotta (R., Washington), one of the lawmakers who faced a primary, told Spotlight PA that outstanding questions before the high court could impact lawmakers’ final language.
“We're ready with either decision … and we're hoping that’s soon,” Bartolotta said.
Chris Gebhard (R., Lebanon), another GOP primary survivor, made similar comments to PennLive, saying he thinks “what we’re all waiting for is the Supreme Court ruling … That’s a vital piece of the puzzle in terms of what the next steps are.”
He also told Spotlight PA the issue will be politically difficult no matter what the decision is. "I’ve been on record — a ruling one way or the other does not make our life easier,” he said.
There’s no deadline for the state Supreme Court justices to deliver their decision, and it may not arrive in time to clarify skill games’ legality ahead of the June 30 budget deadline.
Elizabeth Rementer, spokesperson for the Democrats who control the state House, told Spotlight PA that members of that caucus “have always been open to discussing bringing in new revenue funding streams during budget negotiations. Senate Republicans have yet to show the ability to put together 26 votes for any gaming proposal.”
Spokespeople for the Republicans who control the state Senate and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro didn’t return requests for comment.
Two cases before the court
There are two cases involving skill games before the state Supreme Court.
One dates to 2019, when agents for the Pennsylvania State Police’s Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement seized three skill games, a bag containing $525 in cash, and receipts from a Dauphin County bar, on the grounds that the machines were illegal gambling devices and related contraband. It was one of several police raids around the region on establishments with skill games, which were not — and still are not — explicitly legal in the commonwealth.
The bar and the skill games supplier, Capital Vending, filed a petition in the county Court of Common Pleas to get their property returned, arguing the machines are games of skill, not gambling devices.
(An owner of Capital Vending, Joseph Calla, is chair of a PAC that was a major spender in the skill games industry’s efforts to unseat incumbent Republican senators in the primary election.)
The question of whether skill games involve enough luck to be considered gambling, or enough skill that an experienced player can consistently win, has been at the heart of the case as it has wound through the state’s appellate courts. The Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas and Commonwealth Court both ruled that the games are skill-based.
In the other case, Pace-O-Matic, a major skill games developer and distributor, sued the state in 2018 to get a judgment about whether the games are legal. Commonwealth Court ruled the state’s existing law regulating gaming doesn’t apply to skill games.
The court heard both of those cases separately in November 2025. However, the justices will likely rule on them together.
During oral arguments, attorneys arguing for and against skill games agreed on some basic facts.
After a player inserts money into one of the Pace-O-Matic machines, the money is converted into “points” that the player can commit to a puzzle. They can preview the next puzzle before committing points.
The first phase of the game presents players with spinning reels that land, tic-tac-toe style, in columns of three, and players are supposed to match three symbols in a row. The game can either allow them to solve the puzzle and win 105% of the points they committed; solve it and win fewer than 105%; or it can give them a puzzle that is not solvable.
Players who lose points can then play another pattern-matching game that, if done correctly, restores the points lost, plus an additional 5%.
To the question of whether this all involves more skill or luck, Matt Haverstick, the attorney for the skill games supplier, told the court in November that the second half of the game can always be won by a skillful player.
But because of the games' preview feature, he argued, "there is skill" in the first part of the game as well. “You have to quickly match up on every possibility of what can happen next, whether you're going to get a winner or a loser, and then decide which one of the winners you want … I think there is skill to it.”
Susan Affronti is the senior deputy attorney general who argued on behalf of the state that the games constitute gambling. She told the court in November that it’s not enough for the games to include an element of skill — they must be “predominantly” skill-based.
“What is this game predominantly about?” she asked. “Is it about playing [the matching portion of the game] for an hour to win a dollar? Or is it about the hope of spinning those reels three seconds and getting $2,000? That's the gambling. And that is definitely predominant here.”
Further, Affronti noted, to even get to the skill-based matching portion of a game in which players can make back their money, they have to wait several seconds until a new option pops up on the screen.
“It will say at the bottom, merely, ‘Touch here to follow me.’ That's the first time there's any mention of the skill component, and that's the only mention … It's not explained. I truthfully don't know why anyone would touch it,” she said.
In the other case, Senior Deputy Attorney General Michael Scarinci argued that Commonwealth Court’s previous ruling — that Pennsylvania’s gaming act doesn’t apply to skill games — was wrong.
“This game is not subject to the kind of regulation, taxation, and consumer protections that the legislature envisions for slot machines,” he told the justices. “To vindicate the legislature's intent, this court should conclude that the gaming act prohibits [Pace-O-Matic’s] slot machines.”
Haverstick, who was also the attorney for skill games in this case, argued on Pace-O-Matic’s behalf that if skill games are covered under the gaming act, a slew of other games have to be too. Also covered under those criteria, he said, “are arcade games, are Skee-Ball, are those basketball net things that you can do at Dave & Buster's.”
While the court’s eventual decision will provide legal certainty, it won’t change the material reality that there are tens of thousands of skill games already in businesses and convenience stores across the commonwealth. Removing those machines would likely require a massive enforcement effort.
Attorney General Dave Sunday has already taken some action, finding two Western Pennsylvania firms in violation of state law earlier this year because, as Sunday said, they were distributing “slot machines essentially dressed up as skill games.”
That finding led to the seizure of some 400 games from dozens of locations in a case that took at least two years to resolve.
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