NEWS

California Cardrooms Challenge Indian Casinos
Several Bay area cardrooms and a Sacramento bingo hall operator filed suit in federal court recently to overturn compacts between the state and Indian tribes that allow Las Vegas style casinos on Indian land.
The cardrooms say they were driven to legal action by the prospect of an Indian tribe from Sonoma County taking over a cardroom in San Pablo and turning it into a full-blown casino, which they say would devastate their businesses "Nobody, including us, envisioned that tribal casinos would end up in an urban areas," said Kevin Beers, president of the Sacramento Consolidated Charities, a nonprofit that donated to about 50 charities last year.

Doug Elmets, a spokesman for the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, the tribe that would own the San Pablo Casino, said the lawsuit was filed "by a renegade group of card clubs."

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court says that the compacts signed by tribes and ratified by voters in Proposition 1A last march, violates federal law and the Constitution by giving tribes a "monopoly" right to run Class 3 gambling operations, such as slot machines and card gaming in which the house takes a cut. Additionally, the suit says that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act does not allow tribes to operate forms of gambling not permitted to others in the state.

The governor's office declined to comment on the suit.

Tony Cohen, attorney for the Lytton Band, said "the suit is mistaken in alleging that tribes have been given special rights as an ethnic minority to run gambling operations. The tribes are sovereign nations and engage in gambling as the result of agreement between the governments."

A bill approved by Congress late last year and signed by former President Clinton called for the San Pablo land to be put in trust for the Lytton Band, bypassing the normal application to the BIA.

February, 2001