California cardrooms protest pro-tribes bill

A California Assembly committee has passed a bill that would grant tribal casinos and other parties the right to sue the state's cardrooms over controversial TPPP (third-party proposition player) card games, in the face of opposition from the cardrooms and their supporters.

The Assembly's Standing Committee on Governmental Organization passed Senate Bill 549 by a surprisingly wide 15-1 (with five abstentions) margin last week, sending the bill on to the Assembly's Committee on Appropriations for further debate.

SB 549's committee passage occurred despite over 100 protesters picketing outside California's state capitol building in Sacramento as the vote occurred. The protesters included cardroom management and employees and prominent city officials from several of the cities where cardrooms are located.

Loss of jobs and revenue feared

The bill's opponents have cried foul over the impact of the measure, which is now titled the "Tribal Nations Access to Justice Act". The bill would allow the tribes to re-litigate the legality of several of the disputed games, in which the tribal coalition backing SB 549 asserts that the de facto banking of the games by the cardrooms is illegal, despite the use of a workaround that has repeatedly been approved by California's gaming regulators.

The cardroom-friendly protests cite not only the existing legality of the games, but the massive economic impact should SB 549 become law. As reported on previously by PokerOrg, many cardrooms could be forced to downsize if certain card games were barred, and numerous smaller rooms could be forced out of business entirely. Cities hosting the cardrooms could collectively see revenue losses totaling tens of millions of dollars each year.

SB 549 would allow the well-funded tribal casinos to launch expensive litigation against any room offering TPPP games, while also exempting the California Gambling Control Commission from any adjudged damages, and its passage would almost certainly trigger secondary litigation on the constitutional legality of the bill.

“SB 549 is a bill that will negatively harm many of our cities who have cardrooms located in their communities," said Marcel Rodarte, executive director for the California Contracts Cities Association, which backs the rooms' existence and legality of the games. "Cardrooms are an integral part of our cities as they provide jobs.”