North Dakota’s five Native American tribes were dealt a blow to their desire to get exclusive rights to host internet gambling and sports betting. Governor Doug Burgum rejected the plea last week, saying state law doesn’t allow it.
“While we understand and appreciate the desire by some of the tribes to extend online gaming beyond their reservation boundaries, a clear legal path does not exist for the governor to grant such a broad expansion of gaming,” Burgum said in a statement.
The tribes had asked the governor to approve the expansion with the thought they fell under the compacts each tribe had with the state. Those agreements expire at the end of this year. There is no indication that they can be rewritten to allow the tribes to control internet gambling and sports betting.
A spokesman for the tribes, Mike Nowatzki, said the proposal in the new compact would allow mobile devices to place bets that would be routed through servers on tribal land, thus being within reservation boundaries and in compliance with state law.
Both sides want to avoid a similar situation like the one in Florida, where the state and the Seminole Tribe ended up in court—the case has been tied up for months.
The tribes have said that they need this revenue stream because they have been hurt by the state’s Las Vegas-style pull tab machines that were legalized in 2017 to benefit charities. In fiscal 2022, the state reported that $1.75 billion was spent on the machines.
Collette Brown, executive director of the Spirit Lake Indian Tribe, told the Associated Press that the revenue has taken a hit because of the pull tab machines.
“We’re not going to get that money back,” Brown said.
Charities have argued that if the tribes got control of internet gambling and sports betting, it would be a monopoly that could threaten the existence of charitable gambling.
The next step is to have a legislative management committee review the compacts and then send them to the U.S. Department of the Interior which oversees tribal gambling operations across the country.
