The Comanche Nation recently filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Western District Court of Oklahoma claiming the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs are allowing the Chickasaw Nation and other tribes to ignore certain requirements regarding placing off-reservation land into trust for new casinos.
In May, the Chickasaw Nation began construction of a $10 million, 36,000 square foot casino in Terral, two miles north of the Texas border. The land was taken into trust in January and the facility is expected to open in 2018. The Comanche Nation operates the Red River Hotel and Casino in Devol, about 50 miles from the Chickasaws’ Terral casino. The Comanches also own land on a tribal allotment where it plans to build a new casino less than 10 miles from Terral, the lawsuit states.
Comanche Nation attorney Richard Grellner said larger, wealthier tribes including the Chickasaw Nation are dominating Oklahoma’s gaming market because they are receiving preferential treatment from the federal government.
“The Comanche feel like they’ve played by the rules and their competition didn’t, ” Grellner said. The lawsuit states, “BIA officials moved the goal line so close to the Chickasaws and other privileged tribes in Oklahoma that they have needed only to fall into the end zone and open up shop, secure in the knowledge that the score was virtually certain to hold up without any replay.”
The Comanches also claim the federal government allowed the Chickasaw Nation to avoid a federal law requiring a formal environmental impact study. “The project has thus far required creation of several ‘sewage lagoons’ so large they are visible from space,” according to the lawsuit.
Chickasaw Nation Senior Counsel Stephen Greetham said the tribe has completed an initial review of the lawsuit. “Based on our review, the complaint does not raise any factual or legal point of merit,” Greetham said.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and National Indian Gaming Commission Chairman Jonodev Chaudhuri also are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
