High Court to Decide on Control of Indian Bingo

Attorneys for California, seeking to curb “high-stakes gambling” on Indian reservations in Southern California, told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the unchecked growth of Indian bingo operations threatens to bring with it “an infiltration of organized crime.”

Moreover, they said, the gambling operations on Indian lands in Riverside and San Diego counties are flourishing only because the state limits such gambling outside the reservation.

However, in this test of whether states can regulate activities on self-governed Indian lands, the justices repeatedly asked for a clearer justification for the state’s attempt to control the bingo operations.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, after noting that the state already permits gambling on horse racing and through the state lottery, said, “It’s pretty hard to get moral all of a sudden when you hit bingo.”

Under state law, prize money in church bingo games is limited to $250. The reservation bingo parlors offer prizes of up to $15,000, however, and some tribes are generating revenues of up to $1 million a month.

California alone has 26 gambling operations on Indian lands within its borders, and there are more than 100 similar operations in 19 other states, according to the state’s brief.

Attorneys from Riverside County, joined by state officials, initially went to court seeking to halt gambling operations on the reservations of the Cabazon and Morongo Indians. But a federal District Court ruled that these officials had no right to intervene in Indian affairs, and in February, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

The justices are expected to rule in the case by July.