Although it’s been two years since the Mohegan Sun lost out on its application to put a casino at Suffolk Downs, Massachusetts, the Connecticut-based tribal authority is pursuing its case in court, challenging the process by which the Massachusetts Gaming Commission awarded the license for the Boston metro area to Wynn.
The state’s Supreme Judicial Court is now considering the case. The key to the case is the interpretation of the 2011 gaming expansion act that authorized the three casino resorts and one slots parlor. The law gives the commission “full discretion” and supposedly removes the courts from hearing appeals to its decisions. The tribe’s lawyers argue that it does allow the appeal of a license approval, while not allowing appeals of license denials.
They argue that the approval should be reset since the approval for Wynn involved secret negotiations and the fact that the property Wynn purchased in Everett was partially owned by two men with criminal backgrounds who tried to keep their involvement secret.
Wynn has already begun construction at the site.
Mashpee Casino
A year after the 2,500-member Mashpee Wampanoag tribe celebrated the New Year with a decision by the Bureau of Indian Affairs putting its Taunton land into trust, the First Light casino that decision was supposed to have brought is dead in the water—torpedoed by a federal court that found that the BIA action was illegal.
At issue is a $600 million casino with 3,000 slots, 150 gaming tables and 40 poker tables; a hotel with 300 rooms, which is being funded by the Genting Group, considered the largest casino developer in the world. The tribe broke ground in April and had hoped to finish the casino this year.
The law challenging the action that put 151 acres into trust was filed in February by 22 residents of Taunton who oppose the casino. They allege that the BIA created “unprecedented” definitions of what an Indian is and what a reservation is.
The tribe has certainly been around for a long time. Its ancestors are said to have greeted the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock. Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell wrote in a court brief that the tribe’s connection to the land goes back 12,000 years.
Nobody challenges the tribe’s antiquity, but the challenge does hinge around whether the tribe has been under federal jurisdiction since before 1934. The tribe was recognized by the federal government in 2007. The 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar Supreme Court decision ruled that tribes that were not under “federal jurisdiction” before 1934 can’t put land into trust.
Financial backing for the lawsuit partially comes from the commercial developer who hoped to build a casino at the Brockton fairgrounds, but whose application was rejected by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission in favor of the tribe.
Last August U.S. District Court Judge William Young rejected the methodology that the BIA used for putting the land into trust, although several months later he noted that the agency might be able to find another way to put the land into trust.
