POLK COUNTY, Texas — The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas won a major victory on Tuesday for its electronic bingo facility west of Woodville.
In a ruling dated August 31, 2021, U.S. Magistrate Judge Keith Giblin ruled that under the tribe’s restoration act from 1987 it can legally operate its Naskila Gaming electronic bingo center.
The tribe has spent the last five years in litigation fighting for the right to keep the gaming center open.
The tribe says that it employs hundreds of people in connection with the center that the state of Texas has sought to close for some time now.
The National Indian Gaming Commission found in 2015 that the tribe was eligible the under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to be approved for Class II Bingo Gaming.
The IGRA is the federal law governing tribal gaming throughout the U.S.
In May 2016 the tribe opened the Naskila Gaming center only to have the State of Texas file a lawsuit a month later to have it shut down.
The tribe launched a defense saying that the approval by the Indian gaming commission was entitled to deference and superseded a 1994 Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision saying the tribe’s gaming rights were not covered by the IGRA but by the tribe’s restoration act.
They also countered that if the gaming was not covered under IGRA that their bingo games were permitted by restoration act.
By 2019 the Fifth Circuit court agreed with the lower court’s ruling that the tribe’s approval from the NIGC was not entitled to deference saying that the tribe’s gaming was regulated by the restoration act.
Judge Giblin heard testimony and arguments in May 2021 claiming the tribe’s electronic bingo was allowed by the restoration act.
This week he ruled that the restoration act does in fact allow the tribe to offer gaming not already prohibited by state law.
Bingo is legal in Texas in that it is regulated but not prohibited and therefore the tribe’s electronic bingo is allowed under the restoration act.