The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a man to sue to block an Indian casino could impact the ability of other tribes to obtain land for a casino, experts said.
In particular, the ruling casts a cloud over the efforts by the Mashpee Wampanoag to develop a casino in Massachusetts. At the very least, the ruling promises to add years of litigation for tribes that want to build casinos. The delay and legal uncertainty may scare off Wall Street investors who have bankrolled the tribes in return for a cut of the future casino profits.
“What the decision could do is erect new barriers for tribes and heighten those that already exist,” Steven Light, codirector of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy at the University of North Dakota, told the Boston Globe.
What is really needed is a full scale look at whether Indian casinos have delivered on their promises. The are more than 400 Indian casinos. Most opened after 1988 when Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which was signed by President Reagan.
The casino boom has slowed recently as the Indian casinos have been hurt by the recession, increased competition and huge debt burdens. But clearly the goals of the IGRA have been met with mixed and troubling results as detailed in Time magazine in 2002 by the great reporting team of Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. See part two here.
The late New York Times columnist William Safire summed up how the intent of the IGRA has been hijacked this way: “The poorest of our aboriginal Americans are getting poorer, while non-Indians get rich hiring lobbyists to get federal recognition of a tribal front for the sole purpose of buying land to build a casino. It is a financial-political scandal of stunning proportions. Under the cover of helping the 28 percent of Indians now mired in poverty, financial vultures and highly paid, revolving-door lobbyists are ripping off the U.S. taxpayer.”
Read the full column here. Ten years later, not much has changed in the way Indian casinos operate. Except now there is an even bigger legal cloud hanging over future expansion efforts.
