Gaming, Native American

Beginning with Bingo

Indian gaming is fundamentally different from most forms of gambling, from church bingo nights to the commercial casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip, because it is conducted by tribal governments as an exercise of their sovereign rights. Tribal sovereignty, a historically rooted doctrine recognizing tribes' inherent rights as independent nations preexisting the United States and its Constitution, is the primary legal and political foundation of federal Indian law and policy and, thus, Indian gaming. Native American tribes have a special status outside as well as within the American federal system, that is, under federal law defined and circumscribed by the historical development of the legal and political doctrine of tribal sovereignty. In essence, the modern legal doctrine means that the United States recognizes tribes as independent sovereign nations, and their location within the boundaries of a state does not subject them to the application of state law, yet they are subject to Congress's asserted plenary power and bound by the trust relationship between the federal government and tribes. Tribes, therefore, have a unique semi-sovereign status under federal law and, accordingly, may be regulated by Congress.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a few tribes, notably in California and Florida, opened high-stakes bingo palaces as a means of raising revenue when faced with the Reagan administration's policy of encouraging tribal self-sufficiency and economic development while cutting funding to Indian programs. The strategies available to tribes were limited: Reservation economies had been depressed for a century, in part because of the location and nature of the lands assigned to the tribes by the federal government. Bingo was an attractive option to tribal governments because startup costs were relatively low, bingo enterprises had a minimal impact on the environment, and the game had potential for high returns on the tribes' investment.

Bingo was legal in California and Florida, as it was in many states at the time, but state law stringently regulated the game through both civil and criminal penalties. Because federal Indian law generally [Page 520]precluded state regulation of tribes, tribal bingo operations frequently did not comply with state gambling laws. As their sole source of government revenue, two tribes—the Cabazon and Morongo Bands of Mission Indians—operated high-stakes bingo halls and a card club on their reservations in Riverside County, California. California law permitted charitable bingo games but restricted the amount of jackpots and the use of gaming profits. The tribes challenged the state's enforcement of its regulations on the tribes' reservations, and the case culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1987 decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.

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