News · Litigation

Apple, Google Face Parallel Federal Casino-App MDLs

Two federal MDLs accuse Apple and Google of profiting as app-store hosts of casino games; a 2025 ruling dismissed California claims in both with prejudice.

By SweepsMonitor Editorial Desk · Sep 29, 2025 · 8 min read

Apple and Google aren't being sued for making casino games. They're being sued for distributing them — and for taking a cut every time a player buys virtual chips inside one. Two federal multidistrict litigations, filed in 2021 and coordinated before the same judge in the Northern District of California, argue that running the app store is enough to put the platform on the hook. On September 30, 2025, that judge dismissed the California state-law claims in both cases with prejudice. Neither MDL is over. Both just lost their California claims for good.

What an MDL is, and why there are two of them

Multidistrict litigation is a federal procedural tool, not a separate court or a class-action mechanism in itself. When large numbers of similar lawsuits are filed against the same defendant in different federal districts, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation can centralize them before a single judge for coordinated pretrial handling — shared discovery, consolidated motions, one set of rulings instead of dozens of conflicting ones. The cases don't merge into a single lawsuit with a single outcome; they stay procedurally distinct and can eventually be sent back to their home districts for trial. What centralization buys is efficiency and consistency while the cases are being litigated.

Here, the JPML created two separate MDLs rather than one. In re: Apple Inc. App Store Simulated Casino-Style Games Litigation is MDL No. 2985; In re: Google Play Store Simulated Casino-Style Games Litigation is MDL No. 3001, docketed as 5:21-md-03001. Both were filed in 2021, both sit in the Northern District of California, and both have been coordinated before the same judge. They remain legally separate dockets — Apple isn't a defendant in the Google case and vice versa — but the shared judge and near-identical claims mean rulings in one case are being watched closely for what they signal about the other. The September 30 dismissal is the clearest example: the same order landed in both MDLs the same day.

Why the app stores, not just the game makers, are defendants

Neither MDL targets a casino-game developer directly. Apple and Google are named as defendants in their capacity as app-store operators — the companies that host the games, process the in-app purchases, and take a percentage of every transaction. The plaintiffs' consolidated nationwide class alleges federal RICO violations and invokes state gambling-loss-recovery statutes across multiple states, arguing that a platform which distributes simulated casino-style games and profits from their in-app purchase flow can itself bear liability for the underlying conduct, not merely the developers who built the games.

That's a genuinely novel theory of exposure. App-store operators have historically treated their role as a distribution and payment-processing layer — closer to a landlord collecting rent than to the businesses operating inside the building. The RICO and gambling-loss claims in these MDLs argue the platform's cut of every purchase, combined with its curation and approval of which games appear in the store, makes it more than a passive host. It's important to be precise about what this is: an allegation the plaintiffs must still prove, not a finding any court has made. Nothing about the September 30 ruling addressed whether Apple's or Google's conduct actually satisfies a RICO claim or a gambling-loss statute on the merits — that ruling was narrower, and specific to one state's law.

The California ruling: what it does and doesn't decide

On September 30, 2025, the court dismissed all California state-law claims in both the Apple and Google MDLs with prejudice — meaning California claimants cannot refile those specific claims in this litigation. The court's reasoning was that California's public policy against private gambling-loss recovery bars California claimants specifically from pursuing that state's statutory remedy in this context. That's a resolved outcome, not an allegation: the dismissal happened, and it's final as to California claims in these cases.

What it is not is a dismissal of either MDL as a whole, and it is not a ruling that other states' gambling-loss statutes fail for the same reason. California's public-policy bar is a feature of California law specifically. The order doesn't purport to resolve whether Illinois, Connecticut, or any other state's loss-recovery statute survives a similar challenge — those claims, where pending, continue on their own track in each MDL. It also doesn't touch the federal RICO claims in either case, which are a separate legal theory not grounded in state gambling-loss law at all. Any claimant assuming the September 30 order ended their case, or that it foreshadows an identical result outside California, is reading more into a state-specific ruling than the order actually holds.

Why two parallel MDLs before one judge signals scale

The JPML doesn't create an MDL for a handful of scattered complaints; centralization exists because enough similar suits were filed across enough districts to justify coordinated handling. That two separate MDLs — one against each of the two dominant mobile app-store operators — reached that threshold, and then landed before the same judge, says something about how widespread this litigation theory has become. It isn't a single plaintiff's firm testing a theory in one court. It's a volume of filings large enough, against both major distribution platforms, to warrant federal consolidation twice over.

The shared judge also means the two cases are functionally being litigated in parallel even though they remain separate dockets. A significant ruling on a motion to dismiss, a discovery dispute, or a legal theory in one case is likely to inform how the same judge approaches the equivalent issue in the other — which is exactly what happened with the identical California dismissal landing in both MDLs on the same date. Defendants, plaintiffs, and other platforms watching from outside this litigation should expect that pattern to continue: rulings in the Apple MDL are a reasonable proxy for what's coming in the Google MDL, and vice versa, even though neither case controls the other's outcome as a matter of law.

A broader category than sweepstakes casinos

It's worth being precise about scope. These MDLs cover "simulated casino-style games" broadly — slot-machine, poker, and casino-style apps that use virtual currency purchased with real money, regardless of whether that app also offers a sweepstakes-style, no-purchase-necessary path to a redeemable prize. That's a wider category than the dual-currency sweepstakes-casino model SweepsMonitor covers day to day, where a promotional second currency can be redeemed for cash prizes. Many of the apps implicated in this litigation may be purely social casino products with no redemption mechanism at all — games where the virtual chips have no cash-out value whatsoever, but where players still spend real money to keep playing. The claims here turn on the purchase-and-loss dynamic of simulated gambling generally, not specifically on sweepstakes redemption mechanics.

What we know / What remains unclear

What we know: Two federal MDLs exist — No. 2985 against Apple and No. 3001 against Google — both filed in 2021, both centralized in the Northern District of California, both coordinated before the same judge, and both still active. Both name federal RICO claims and multi-state gambling-loss-recovery claims. On September 30, 2025, the presiding court dismissed the California state-law claims in both cases with prejudice, based on California's public policy against private gambling-loss recovery for California claimants. That dismissal is final as to California and does not extend to the federal RICO claims or to other states' gambling-loss statutes.

What remains unclear: How claims under other states' gambling-loss-recovery statutes will fare has not been decided in either MDL. The federal RICO claims against both companies remain unresolved on the merits. Neither Apple nor Google has been found liable for anything in these cases; the underlying allegations — that either company's app-store role makes it legally responsible for losses tied to games it distributes — remain allegations the plaintiffs have not yet proven. The scope of the "simulated casino-style games" class in each case, including exactly which apps and which states' claimants remain in the litigation after the California dismissal, has not been fully detailed in the public docket record reviewed for this story.

Why it matters beyond these two dockets

If either MDL ultimately holds that an app-store operator can be liable — under RICO or a state gambling-loss statute — for games it distributes and takes a percentage cut from, the implications reach past Apple and Google specifically. Every distribution platform that hosts real-money or simulated-gambling apps and processes their in-app purchases would face the same theory of exposure that these plaintiffs are testing here. That's the reason two separate MDLs, coordinated before one judge, are worth tracking as a single story rather than two unrelated cases: the legal question at their core — how far liability extends from a game's operator to the platform that sells access to it — is the same question in both, and a ruling that resolves it in one case will shape how the other, and any future case like it, gets argued.

For now, the concrete facts are narrower than that broader question. Both MDLs remain active. Both lost their California state-law claims on the same day, for the same reason, without losing anything else. What each case still has to answer — whether an app store's cut of a purchase is enough to make it liable for what the purchase paid for — hasn't been decided by anyone yet.