Tribal casinos use CA regulations to trample card rooms

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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While typing a a book on California politics a quarter of a century ago I devoted a chapter primarily to the phenomenal emergence of Native American tribes as a powerful interest group after being treated shamefully, even despicably, for nearly 500 years.

After their first contact with Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo in San Diego Bay in 1542, members of the tribe were considered subhuman by early California settlers. The abuse continued after California became a state in 1850.

As California historian Kevin Starr writes, “The Indians were not formally held in slavery, but they were exterminated at will and at the expense of the legislature, and for years in the southern part of the state, under the guise of penal labor, the Indians were driven out of the bargain.”

Pushed onto reservations by the federal government, most California tribes lived in squalor until the late 1920s^th century, their plight has been completely ignored by governors and legislators.

That changed in 1987 decision of the Supreme Court declared that tribes have the legal right to offer gaming.

The tribes moved that initial Supreme Court ruling from Quonset hut bingo parlors to 76 casinos scattered across the state, some lavish resorts rivaling those in Las Vegas. They did so by expanding the ruling’s parameters to include high-profit slot machines and eventually achieved full legal status through voter-approved measures.

Having claimed a legal monopoly on gambling in the nation’s most populous state, the tribes have closely guarded it, using political clout gained from generous contributions to political campaign coffers. Enmity developed along the way, pitting tribal casino owners against local poker rooms what kind of games can the card rooms offer.

Card rooms expanded from poker games to blackjack and other games, and the tribes argued that these games violated their voter-approved monopoly. Efforts by the tribes to block the card rooms through a lawsuit failed, so in 2022 they folded into their sports betting voting measure legal right to sue card rooms if the attorney general fails to crack down on alleged illegal games.

Both that measure and a competing sports betting proposal sponsored by online gaming teams were rejected by voters, so the tribes turned to the Legislature, sponsoring bill to create the same right as the ballot measure sought. Card rooms, of course, opposed the measure, but the Legislature passed it in 2024 and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it.

The passage of the bill opened the door for Attorney General Rob Bonta’s proposal new provisions this would, among other things, essentially ban blackjack and similar games in card rooms. Last month, two years after they were originally proposed, Bonta’s rules cleared a final legal hurdle and will go into effect in April.

This is a huge, even existential, blow to card rooms and small towns that depend on card room taxes to fund their budgets. This week, they hit back with two lawsuits challenging the legality of the new regulations.

“Attorney General Bonta’s regulations threaten to eliminate more than half of California’s card filing jobs and destroy a critical source of revenue for dozens of cities,” said Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association, in a statement. “These games have operated legally for decades under multiple attorneys general, but one state official is now trying to shut them down without identifying a single public safety issue or addressing 1,764 public comments about these regulations.”

It’s a David vs. Goliath battle. Ann economic analysis published by Bonta’s office on regulations, said Indian casinos had $12.1 billion in gambling revenue in 2023, while card rooms had just $1.4 billion.

It is ironic that the California tribes, treated so miserably for so many decades, are now bullying a much smaller rival just because they can.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.