Judge rejects tribes’ bid to crush cardrooms

Case is latest battle over rights to offer Vegas-style gambling in the Golden State.

- By Ryan SABALOW

THE WIN-RIVER RESORT & Casino is owned by the Redding Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe.

(CAROLYN COLE Los Angeles Times)

Over the years, casinoowning tribes have spent millions in court, in the Legislature and at the ballot box trying unsuccessfully to force their only competitors out of California's casino business.

A judge has blocked their latest effort.

Last year, tribes persuaded the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to allow them to sue gambling halls called cardrooms over the tribes’ claim that they have exclusive rights to offer Las Vegas-style gambling in the state.

Since the tribes are sovereign governments, they had lacked standing to sue the private businesses until Newsom signed Senate Bill 549, which gave the tribes one shot this year to resolve their dispute in Sacramento County Superior Court.

Superior Court Judge Lauri Damrell dismissed the tribes’ case Friday, saying federal gambling law superseded the measure Newsom signed.

“The court is mindful that previous efforts to resolve this long-*/standing dispute — whether through regulatory action, legislation, ballot initiatives, or litigation — have been unavailing,” Damrell wrote in a tentative ruling that she approved during a hearing. The court “recognizes the genuine desire, shared by many stakeholders, including the California Legislature, to reach the merits and achieve a final resolution. The court does not take lightly the importance of the issues at stake and, were it within its authority to provide a definitive resolution, it would endeavor to do so.”

Still, Damrell wrote she was “bound by the limits of federal law.”

California’s cardroom industry applauded the ruling.