Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

High Court Agrees To Hear Indian Gambling Case Justices To Decide Federal Role In Negotiations Between States, Tribes

Associated Press

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to resolve a high-stakes dispute over regulation of gambling on Indian reservations, a $6 billion-a-year industry.

The justices said they will decide in a Florida case whether federal courts have authority to oversee negotiations between tribes and state officials about starting such gambling operations.

In Idaho, The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have gone to federal court, accusing the state of refusing to negotiate a gaming compact in good faith.

Clinton administration lawyers have contended federal courts have the authority to oversee negotiations. But federal appeals courts have split on that aspect of a 1988 federal law, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

Congress had tried to broker a deal by overseeing two years of negotiations between several states and the tribes. But the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee gave up last year when it could not write legislative language acceptable to both sides.

The law gave tribes new freedom to run big-money casinos, bingo halls and other gambling activities on their lands. Reservation gambling has become big business in more than 20 states since the 1988 federal law was passed.

The Supreme Court in 1987 ruled states cannot ban gambling on Indian reservations within their borders, a decision that left Indian gaming largely unregulated by the states.

The 1988 law, a response by Congress to the 1987 ruling, requires federally recognized tribes to negotiate with the respective states before starting some types of on-reservation gambling. States are required to negotiate in good faith, and the law authorizes a tribe to sue a state in federal court if it fails to do so.

That’s what happened in Florida, where the Seminole tribe accused state officials of not negotiating in good faith.

Florida officials contended the Constitution’s 11th Amendment shields them from such lawsuits.

A federal judge in Florida ruled that Congress, in passing the 1988 law, obliterated the states’ traditional 11th Amendment immunity from being sued without consent.

But a federal judge in Alabama ruled in a similar case involving the Poarch Creek Tribe that Congress did not have the power to do away with such immunity.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in both cases, concluded Congress lacked the power to strip away state immunity from lawsuits.

But the appeals court said there was a remedy for a tribe “faced with a state that not only will not negotiate in good faith but also will not consent to suit.”

The tribe may tell the Interior secretary, who then can impose regulations for gambling on the tribe’s reservation, the appeals court said.

Both tribes and both states appealed from parts of the 11th Circuit court’s ruling. The Alabama case is still pending before the justices, and likely will be held until the Florida case is decided.