The Shoalwater Tribe of Washington state has asked a federal court based in Tacoma to dismiss a lawsuit by Maverick Gaming challenging the state’s sports betting law that gives exclusivity to gaming tribes.
The tribe calls the lawsuit by Maverick “a direct attack on tribal sovereignty” and has filed a motion to dismiss the case. Maverick is a commercial gaming company that owns 19 cardrooms in the state and casinos in Nevada and Colorado. It filed a challenge to the tribal monopoly in January, calling it “an erroneous application of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.”
The Shoalwater Tribe, acting as a stand-in for the state’s other gaming tribes, argues in its filing that if Maverick is successful it would destroy “every carefully negotiated tribal gaming compact.” It also singled out Maverick Gaming CEO Eric Persson—who belongs to the tribe—of wanting to “destroy, through his requested prayer for relief in the instant litigation, the major source of employment and discretionary revenue for his own tribe.”
Shoalwater Chairwoman Charlene Nelson, told Casino Beats “It pains us to have to legally oppose a member of our own tribe. But Eric Persson’s lawsuit left us no choice.” She added, “If successful, this self-serving case would cause irreparable harm to historically marginalized tribal communities and to the general public as well.”
The tribe’s filing with the court added that it was “compelled to seek limited intervention in this case” to defeat Persson’s “efforts to undermine his own tribe’s very efforts to achieve economic self-sufficiency and provide adequate governmental services to its membership.”
