The Seminole Indian Tribe appears to have the sympathy of a federal judge overseeing the tribe’s courtroom fight to maintain a monopoly on table games in Florida.
The case, which promises to reshape the landscape of gaming in the Sunshine State lucrative casino market?moreover, it could jeopardize billions in future tribal payments to the state?rose out of a breakdown in negotiations between the tribe and the state government toward a new compact that federal law requires to define the parameters of legal gaming for casino tribes.
The Seminoles’ original compact, signed in 2010, gave the tribe exclusivity over banked games like blackjack in return for $1 billion in payments to the state, spread over five years, as part of a 20-year deal. When the revenue-sharing provision expired in 2015, and a new agreement with Governor Rick Scott foundered in the legislature, the tribe continued to operate the games at its casinos, prompting the state to accuse it of illegal gambling. The Seminoles countered that Florida is the transgressor, having violated both the letter and the spirit of the compact by allowing banked card games and electronic blackjack machines at pari-mutuel tracks, and in so doing triggered a clause, or so the tribe’s lawyers argue, allowing the tribe to keep blackjack for the remaining 15 years of the deal.
The tribe is asking U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle to allow them to continue to conduct the games and to order the state back to the bargaining table.
The essence of the dispute came down in Hinkle’s courtroom to what constitutes a “banked” game, and it’s where the Seminoles appear to have gained the upper hand with the judge, who said he plans to rule in their favor, according to news reports.
Lawyers for the tribe say so-called “designated-player” card games offered at horse and greyhound tracks?where players compete against each other with one player acting as the “bank,” paying winners and collecting from losers?violate the compact.
Hinkle agrees, and at the close of a three-day trial earlier this month, told a lawyer representing the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation: “The state has permitted banked card games to go on (at pari-mutuel facilities). It’s a stretch for you to convince me that the state did not permit that.”
In 2014, the department’s Division of Pari-mutuel Wagering adopted a rule governing how the designated-player games should be conducted, but Hinkle dismissed that as an “end run around the prohibition”.
Then regulators earlier this year filed complaints against more than two dozen track operators, alleging that the way the designated-player games were being conducted violated the prohibition against banked games. Those complaints and a move late last year by gambling regulators to repeal the rule touched off legal battles in state administrative courts.
But Hinkle was unmoved. “The state knew about this for a long time and did nothing until the tribe filed a request for mediation,” he said.
He also rejected the department’s position that even if the state did violate the compact only the Legislature could give the tribe permission to continue running banked games.
“You’re not going to win that argument,” the judge said. “You’re just not.”
