The San Diego County-based Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, which is pioneering the concept that a tribe can legally offer online Class II gaming in the form of online bingo, has been sued by the state of California in federal court in an attempt to shut down the website, which launched on November 4.
On November 26 the tribe filed a counter-suit, calling the state action, “a baseless attack.”
California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, filed the lawsuit on November 18 after the tribe began operating a real money bingo site, limited to patrons 18-years-old and older. Bettors create an online account and provide credit card information when they make a bet.
Normally tribes can offer Class II gaming at their reservations without a compact with the state, but offering the games online opens up a whole legal can of worms. The state is asserting that the tribe’s action’s violates its gaming compact with the state by offering games that could be considered Class II.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California argues that the tribe is violating the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) of 1988, among other laws, including the federal government’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006.
The lawsuit will be heard in court December 4.
The lawsuit says, in part: “This action seeks appropriate injunctive relief to prevent unlawful Internet gambling; defendant Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel, also known as Santa Ysabel Band of Diegueño Mission Indians, has begun to offer a facsimile of bingo over the Internet to bettors, who are not located on the Tribe’s Indian lands. In addition to violating state and federal law, the Tribe’s conduct materially breaches the tribal-state class III gaming compact (Compact) between the Tribe and the State.”
The attorney general has also declared the tribe’s online bingo site, DesertRoseBingo.com “an imminent threat to the public health, safety, and welfare” and seeks a temporary restraining order followed by a permanent order from the federal court that the tribe may not offer internet gaming.
The state’s 15-page case rests largely on the tribe allowing persons outside of the reservation to play, i.e. those who are able to access the website. The tribe, “has begun to offer a facsimile of bingo over the Internet to bettors, who are not located on the tribe’s Indian lands,” says the complaint.
The tribe responded to the lawsuit with this statement by its spokesman Cruz Bustamante that the lawsuit, “lacks both substance and merit and attacks tribal sovereignty. We look forward to having the opportunity to demonstrate the legality, regulatory veracity and consumer safety of the Tribe’s interactive Class II bingo enterprise.”
The tribe asserts that the lawsuit, “is attacking the sovereignty of all tribes,” and “ignores existing federal regulations and guidelines encompassed in the Cabazon Decision of the United States Supreme Court, which remains the law of the land.” The landmark California v. Cabazon decision of 1987 held that states have no power to regulate Class II gaming on Indian lands.
The tribe, in its countersuit of November 26, asserted
The Santa Ysabel tribe is the first tribe in the U.S. to assert the claim that it has a right to operate Class II games online. The tribe had previously stated that it has the right to operate poker online, under the assumption that that game is also a Class II. That offering is “imminent,” according to the tribal website, although it has been “imminent” for several months now. It says it does not seek to offer Class III gaming online, and argues that whether or not the state of California legalizes online poker that it can offer it under sovereign right.
IGRA, written in 1988 before the internet was more than an infant, does not address the issue.
The state offered to meet with the tribe on July 14 to discuss online gaming, but the tribe declined, declaring that it was legal to do so without “specific state prohibition on this type of gambling activity.” At that time it also stated that it only intended to offer online poker.
The Santa Ysabel tribe previously operated a small casino in San Diego County, which it opened in 2003. Four years later the tribe shut the casino after becoming millions of dollars in debt, including several millions owed to San Diego County as part of the tribe’s obligation under its gaming compact with the state.
