Dan Walters, CalMatters Commentary. Photo contributed

While writing a book about California politics a quarter-century ago, I devoted one chapter largely to the phenomenal emergence of Native American tribes as a powerful interest group after being treated shamefully, even viciously, for nearly 500 years.

After their first contact with Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo in San Diego Bay in 1542, tribal members were regarded as sub-humans by California’s early settlers. The abuse continued after California became a state in 1850.

As California historian Kevin Starr wrote, “The Indian was not kept in formal slavery, but he was exterminated at the wish and the expense of the Legislature, and for years in the southern part of the state, under the guise of penal labor, Indians were hawked from the auction-block.”

Pushed onto reservations by the federal government, most of California’s tribes lived in squalor until late in the 20th century, their plight completely ignored by governors and legislators.

That changed in 1987 after a Supreme Court decision declared that tribes had the legal right to offer gaming.

The tribes bootstrapped that original Supreme Court decision from bingo parlors in Quonset huts into 76 casinos spread across the state, some sumptuous resorts rivaling those in Las Vegas. They did it by stretching the ruling’s parameters to embrace highly profitable slot machines and eventually achieving full legal status via voter approved ballot measures.

Having claimed a legal monopoly on gambling in the nation’s most populous state, the tribes guard it closely, using political clout gained from lavish contributions to political campaign treasuries. Along the way, a feud developed, pitting casino-owning tribes against local poker parlors over what kind of games the cardrooms could offer.

The cardrooms had expanded from poker games to blackjack and other games, and the tribes contended those games violate their voter-approved monopoly. Tribes’ efforts to block the cardrooms via lawsuit failed, so in 2022, they folded into their sports wagering ballot measure a legal right to sue cardrooms if the state attorney general failed to clamp down on the allegedly illegal games.

That measure, and a competing sports wagering proposal sponsored by online gaming outfits, were both rejected by voters, so the tribes turned to the Legislature, sponsoring a bill to create the same right the ballot measure sought. The cardrooms, of course, opposed the measure, but the Legislature passed it in 2024 and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it.

The bill’s passage opened the door for Attorney General Rob Bonta to propose new regulations that would, among other things, essentially ban blackjack and similar games in cardrooms. Last month, two years after they were originally proposed, Bonta’s rules cleared a final legal hurdle and will take effect in April.

It’s a huge, even existential, blow to the cardrooms and the small cities that depend on cardroom taxes to finance their budgets. This week they struck 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 cardroom jobs and wipe out a critical source of revenue for dozens of cities,” Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association, said in a statement. “These games have operated legally for decades under multiple attorneys general, yet one public official is now moving to shut them down without identifying a single public safety concern or addressing the 1,764 public comments about these regulations.”

It’s a David vs. Goliath battle. An economic analysis published by Bonta’s office in conjunction with the regulations says that Indian casinos had $12.1 billion in gambling revenues in 2023, while cardrooms had just $1.4 billion.

It’s ironic that California’s tribes, treated so shabbily for so many decades, are now bullying a much smaller rival, just because they can.

---

This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.