
Video Poker 247
- Catawbas Fighting for Video Poker
The Catawba Indian Nation is dead set that they will get video poker.
They say that they will do whatever they have to in order to get video
poker machines, as it is their right to offer it under their 1993 land
deal with the state. They say that they are going to keep appealing
until they get what they want.
This currently means taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court as
the South Carolina Supreme Court has denied them video poker games.
The Court said that it violates a state law that was passed in 2000
that outlaws video poker. They said that they had already planned on
going to a higher court as they expected that the S.C. Court would try
to reject the case.
The Catawbas are the only federally recognized tribe in South
Carolina, and they don’t even really want video poker. However, if
they get video poker, it opens the door to what they really want which
is a high stakes bingo parlor. But they say that they sued in 2005 to
offer video poker as their deal allows them to do it, so they are
going to get it. The state says that since they have a 14 year old
land deal, what they do with that land falls under state not federal
jurisdiction – so if they say no video poker, then that is the end of
it.
Critics of the Catawbas are afraid that if they get their bingo
palace, they will open the door to more bingo parlors across the
state, and that cannot be allowed. Some of the Catawbas are not happy
about it either, as they think that trying to go about getting what
they want is not going to work, they want to go through the Indian
Gaming Regulatory Act to get their video poker approved.
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August 2007 Archive