Pojoaque Pueblo recently filed an appeal with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, disputing U.S. District Judge James Browning’s decision rejecting the pueblo’s complaint that New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and the state’s Gaming Control Board broke the law by threatening to punish vendors doing business at its two casinos since its gaming compact expired last year. Browning said under state law “state vendor licensees must comply with all ‘laws and regulations governing the operations of a gaming establishment,’ and must not ‘further or profit from any illegal activity or practice.’ Here, vendors dealing with Pojoaque Pueblo’s gaming establishments after the expiration of its Class III compact with New Mexico are ‘furthering, or profiting’ from Pojoaque Pueblo’s illegal practice.”
The Pojoaque’s prior signed compact expired at the end of June 2015. At the time, U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez (no relation to the governor) allowed the pueblo to continue operating its casinos as long as it put into an escrow account the 8 percent of net win it had paid the state until the compact issue could be decided by a federal appeals judge. That case is still pending in federal court. The pueblo’s net win in 2014 was more than $60.7 million.
But the pueblo–which operates the Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino and Cities of Gold Casino north of Santa Fe–refused to sign the latest compact passed by the legislature last year. It filed the current complaint in federal court in July 2015. In October 2015, U.S. District Judge Robert Brack granted a preliminary injunction against the state, prohibiting it from taking action against the tribe’s vendors.
But in rejecting Brack’s ruling, Browning said the state has “taken no regulatory action on Pojoaque Pueblo’s tribal lands.” He added the state’s actions “do not prohibit Pojoaque Pueblo from continuing its gaming operations, nor do they prevent vendors from supplying equipment to Pojoaque Pueblo for such operations.” Pojoaque Pueblo remains free, Browning noted, to continue gaming operations on the pueblo’s lands as long as the U.S. attorney allows those casinos to operate.
