In a longstanding battle between Union Springs, New York and the Cayuga Nation, the village has appealed a 2020 District Court decision that tribal laws take precedence over municipal ordinances.
The village upholds a 1958 ordinance that restricts games of chance (although charity bingo games occasionally are allowed). In recent oral arguments, attorney David H. Tennant said a tribal casino, Lakeside Entertainment, should not be considered part of the Cayuga Nation’s reservation and therefore may not offer gaming.
“These ancient reservations have not officially been disestablished. But the land is now a place over which the tribes exercise no inherent sovereignty, in whole or in part,” he said.
Tennant cited a 2005 Supreme Court decision that stopped the Oneida Nation from re-declaring its ancient sovereignty over land that had been sold in 1807 and repurchased by the Oneidas’ descendant tribe in the 1990s. The court ruled the Oneida Nation had “relinquished governmental reins and could not regain them through open-market purchases from current titleholders.”
However, U.S. Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch said the issue in the Cayuga gaming regulation lawsuit is not about tribal rights over the land but the rights of the federal government. “Congress has arrogated to itself the regulation of this kind of gaming,” Lynch said. He noted that, unlike in the Oneida Nation tax dispute, everyone involved in the Cayuga case agrees “the land is on an Indian reservation that has never been disestablished.”
In addition, Lynch said, the Oneida case dealt with major exemptions from regulation and jurisdiction. “What’s claimed here is much more modest. That’s the problem that I have with your argument,” he said.
Attorney David DeBruin, representing the Cayuga Nation, argued that the village cannot rewrite IGRA to define reservations more narrowly. “So when IGRA defines ‘Indian lands’ to mean ‘all’ lands within ‘any’ reservation, courts cannot rewrite that definition to exclude lands within some reservations.”
Lakeside Entertainment briefly closed down due to Covid-19 in March 2020 and reopened in May 2020 with new safety protocols, including temperature checks and mandatory masks.
