Scoop: California tribes sue to ban private casino "banked" games

• Seven tribal nations filed a lawsuit Thursday in California Superior Court against dozens of small casinos just hours after a new state law went into effect allowing tribes to dispute the legality of certain games.
• A court ruling in favor of the tribes could also redirect lucrative card game revenues back toward Native American communities that have struggled with poverty and inequality for decades.

Catch up quick: California card rooms have operated for years despite opposition from federally recognized tribes in the state who say they only have exclusive rights to "banked" games.

• "Banked" games, such as blackjack, baccarat, and pai gow, are ones where a single player or entity takes all comers, pays all winnings, and collects all losses.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in September signed the Tribal Nations Access to Justice Act, which allows one-time state court action to determine whether these controlled games operated by commercial cardrooms violate state law.
• Court action could also decide if "banked" card games run by private casinos infringe upon tribal exclusive gaming rights.

Zoom in: The lawsuit filed in Sacramento alleges that California card rooms and their partner third-party proposition players have ignored the law and refused to recognize tribes' exclusive rights.

• "Instead, they have reaped illegal windfalls by offering banked games that are barred by the California Constitution, California Penal Code, and relevant judicial decisions," the lawsuit says.
• The lawsuit argues the California court system should declare these games at private casinos illegal under state law.

The other side: The California Cardroom Alliance says the state's cardroom-operated games have been authorized and approved by the state's Department of Justice and lawfully played since 1983.

• "The California Cardroom Alliance opposes challenges to these games, which would imperil thousands of living wage jobs around the state and create deep deficits in municipal government budgets," the group says on its website.
• The group did not immediately return a message from Axios after the lawsuit was filed.

What they're saying: "California's prohibition on banked games in card rooms can't be just another broken promise to California's Indian tribes," Adam Lauridsen, an attorney for the tribes and for Keker, Van Nest & Peters, said in a statement.

• "The fact that card rooms are making lots of money from breaking the law is no defense."
• Lauridsen says the state receives significant revenues from tribal gaming in return for guaranteeing the tribes the right to run their gaming operations exclusively.

Between the lines: The cardroom challenge comes as more Indigenous tribes nationally assert themselves over issues of sovereignty, political representation, and how they should define who a tribal member is.

• The Cherokee Nation, one of the nation's largest Indigenous tribes, is seeking to change a 140-year-old federal law that governs criminal jurisdiction of tribal citizens on reservations based on "blood quantum."

Fun fact: California is considered the birthplace of tribal casinos largely due to the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, which affirmed that tribes have the sovereignty to operate casinos on reservation lands that fall outside state jurisdiction, Axios San Francisco's Shawna Chen previously reported.

• Today, over 70 of the state's tribes own gaming casinos. Tribes without them receive a portion of the revenue through a shared trust fund.