In Macon, Alabama, Milton McGregor said he will reopen his VictoryLand Casino this summer, even though the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled in an 8-0 decision the state could keep 1,615 gambling machines and 3,000 seized in a 2013 raid at the property. The decision overturned Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy’s ruling last October that Macon County voters approved electronic bingo in a constitutional amendment approving charity bingo in 2003 and that the state was “cherry picking” gambling law enforcement since the games were allowed at other casinos. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange appealed that ruling, leading to the state Supreme Court’s decision.
McGregor said he has agreements with machine manufacturers to provide several hundred new gaming machines for the reopening. He said he’d add more games according to customer demand. McGregor cited the unfairness of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians operating three large casinos with nearly identical machines as those at VictoryLand. “We expect many of the games we will offer to be identical to what is played at the Indian casinos 15 minutes away,” McGregor said.
McGregor added the casino has received about 4,000 job applications and 1,000 people will be hired soon. Furthermore, he noted the casino will work closely with the sheriff and the district attorney to make sure the bingo games offered at the casino are legal.
Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson said under the 2003 amendment, his office and the district attorney have authority over rules and regulations for bingo in the county. “I am not a lawyer, I am a lawman. But I can tell you that ruling last week is not worth the paper it is written on according to the lawyers and knowledgeable people I have talked with.” Sheriff’s attorney James Anderson added the state Supreme Court ruling wrongly ignored findings by Shashy.
However, the justices wrote, “It is the latest, and hopefully the last, chapter in the failure of some local law-enforcement officials in this state to enforce the anti-gambling laws of this state they are sworn to uphold, thereby necessitating the exercise and performance by the attorney general of the authority and duty vested in him by law, as the chief law-enforcement officer of this state, to enforce the criminal laws of this state. It is the latest, and hopefully the last, chapter in the ongoing saga of attempts to defy the clear and repeated holdings of this Court beginning in 2009 that electronic machines like those at issue here are not the ‘bingo’ referenced in local bingo amendments. And finally, it is the latest, and hopefully last, instance in which it is necessary to expend public funds to seek appellate review of the meaning of a simple term—’bingo’–which, as reviewed above, has been declared over and over and over again by this Court. There is no longer any room for uncertainty, nor justification for continuing dispute, as to the meaning of that term. All that is left is for the law of this state to be enforced.”
Attorney General Luther Strange said, “The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling is abundantly clear that electronic bingo is illegal and repeated court challenges to the contrary will not change that fact. I cannot say it any better than the court itself.”
