Seminole Tribe v. Florida: Federal court fight over blackjack rights

A federal court will decide whether Florida's Seminole tribe can continue to legally run blackjack games in their Florida casinos.

The future of card gambling in Florida may depend on a federal trial which was scheduled to start Monday. 

The trial between the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the state of Florida could determine whether the tribe will be able to keep blackjack tables at its casinos. It's the latest attempt at resolving the dispute, ongoing since the tribe filed a lawsuit last year after portions of a gambling deal with the state expired. 

The disagreement stems from a 2010 compact made between the Seminoles and the state, which gave the Seminoles the "exclusive" right to operate banked card games, such as blackjack, at its casinos. As Dara Kram reported for the News Service of Florida in July: 

Under Florida law, a "banking game" is defined as one "in which the house is a participant in the game, taking on players, paying winners, and collecting from losers or in which the cardroom establishes a bank against which participants play." Pari-mutuel cardrooms are allowed to conduct games in which players compete only against each other.

The designated-player games have become wildly popular with gamblers, and have eclipsed other types of card games at most of the state's pari-mutuels that operate cardrooms.

The five-year agreement between the tribe and the state expired last July – but Seminole casinos have continued to offer blackjack, arguing that the state violated the compact by allowing other casinos to operate such games. Under a clause in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the tribe has argued, the state was required to negotiate a new deal in good faith when the first gambling compact expired. 

After the tribe filed a lawsuit in 2015, the state countersued, arguing that the terms of the 2010 deal required the Seminole casinos to remove their blackjack tables. 

In December, Gov. Rick Scott reached a new agreement with the tribe, which would allow them to keep the blackjack tables and add other games such as roulette and craps. That deal, however, was rejected by state lawmakers. 

Now, the battle is set to continue in federal court. So far, Florida taxpayers have paid more than $260,000 to private lawyers to represent the state in the dispute, the News Service of Florida reports. 

This report used material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Seminole Tribe v. Florida: Federal court fight over blackjack rights
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/1003/Seminole-Tribe-v.-Florida-Federal-court-fight-over-blackjack-rights
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe