WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court grappled with its precedent and statutory interpretation Tuesday in a dispute over gambling rules for a tribe in the Lone Star State that could have bigger implications for tribal sovereignty.
One of three federally recognized Indian nations in Texas, the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo has asked the court to consider if its bingo gaming operations are exempt from Texas’ gambling rules. At Speaking Rock Entertainment Center outside of El Paso, the Pueblo use live and casino-style slot bingo that Texas says violates public policy.
At the center of the case sits the court’s 1987 decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians and a Reagan-era law passed shortly after known as the Restoration Act. Cabazon led to the expansion of tribal gambling across the country with its holding that California law permitted regulated gaming rather than prohibiting it. The Restoration Act meanwhile created a federal trust relationship between two tribes and Texas, with one provision of the trust barring the tribes from conducting gambling that the state considers illegal.
Much of Tuesday's argument — one of two pertaining to tribal issues this morning — centered on the distinction between prohibited and regulated gaming. Cabazon was used to create the Restoration Act, and the Pueblo claim that Texas cannot regulate games that it does not completely prohibit.
“On the heels of this court's decision in Cabazon, Congress changed the language of the Restoration Act to replicate the prohibitory regulatory dichotomy struck in Cabazon,” said Brant Martin, an attorney for Wick Phillips Gould representing the Pueblo. “Section 107 A incorporates the Cabazon framework. It federalizes Texas law, but only as to prohibited games and bingo, in the state of Texas, is not a prohibited game.”
Most tribes are permitted to gamble under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act but the Pueblo are subject to the Restoration Act rules instead. The case challenges a 1994 decision by the Fifth Circuit in Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas that granted Texas regulatory jurisdiction over nonprohibited gaming activity on trial lands.
Texas argues that the Pueblo and the state both made compromises in the Restoration Act, and the Pueblo want to rewrite that bargain.
“Everybody in this case wanted something,” said Lanora Pettit, principal deputy solicitor general for Austin, Texas. “The tribe wanted federal recognition and was willing to cede some of its sovereignty. Texas wanted to avoid high-stakes gambling, which it saw as an invitation to organized crime, and was willing to cede some of its jurisdiction.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested just overruling the Cabazon precedent.
“I take your argument that this is a unique text and we have to read the language in that context, but Texas argues that even in this context, the difference between prohibition and regulation is just unworkable,” the Trump appointee said to the Pueblo’s attorney. “It's almost an argument perhaps for overruling Cabazon.”





