India’s Supreme Court has upheld the rights of individual states to prohibit online lotteries based in other states from serving their residents.

On Thursday, the Court sided with the southwestern state of Kerala, which banned all lotteries in January 2005. In April of that same year, the state government amended its ban to permit state-run paper lottery sales, while preserving the ban on online lotteries.

The All Kerala Online Lottery Dealers Association and the states of Sikkim, Meghalaya and Nagaland challenged the Kerala government’s online ban. The Sikkim government, which has a far more tolerant view of gambling than most Indian states, had argued that online play by Kerala residents was a major source of its lottery revenue.

Tough titty, said the Court, ruling that the Kerala ban was in the public interest and the appellants had failed to demonstrate any “compelling grounds” for overturning lower court decisions.