In Kansas, a 3-decades-long dispute has been resolved, as the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently upheld a 2020 ruling allowing the Wyandotte Tribe to move forward with gaming operations on a 10-acre tract known as the Park City Parcel.
The tribe bought the land in 1992 for $25,000 as part of a 1984 Congressional act that allocated $3 million in damages to the tribe relating to treaties that removed the Wyandotte people from ancestral lands.
The distribution specified $100,000 was to be used to purchase land to be taken into federal trust. The tribe applied for trust status for the Park City Parcel in 1993 and 2008 and planned to establish gaming operations there upon approval.
The state of Kansas, however, opposed the tribe’s plans for the land and challenged the validity of the purchase. In addition, state officials said the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act did not permit gaming on the tract. But in 2020, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior approved the Wyandotte’s trust application and granted permission for gaming operations on the land.
The district court upheld the decision and the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed it, noting the Interior secretary was legally obligated to take the land into trust and allow gaming operations there under IGRA’s settlement-of-a-land-claim exception.
