California Attorney General Rob Bonta
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco Superior Court judge has blocked enforcement of gambling regulations drawn up by Attorney General Rob Bonta`s office that would have severely restricted or eliminated blackjack-style table games at cardrooms across California.
Judge Richard Darwin issued a written decision on July 10 in the legal dispute pitting cardrooms against Bonta and the Bureau of Gambling Control, a state agency under his jurisdiction. Darwin invalidated the regulations that were being put in place by the bureau because the court found the agency lacked the authority to restrict such games.
“The ruling affirms what California cardrooms, local governments, employees and communities have argued throughout this process: The bureau is responsible for enforcing California’s century-old gaming laws – not rewriting them,” the California Gaming Association said in a news release.
The court’s preliminary injunction, which will be in effect for 45 days, calls on Bonta and the Bureau to rescind the new regulations dealing with games featuring player-dealer positions and not to deny new game approvals based on the new rules.
“Petitioners are entitled to a declaration that, and this court therefore declares that, respondents lack authority to issue and enforce the regulation, and the regulation is therefore invalid, void and without effect,” Darwin said in the judgment.
The California Gaming Association said the decision affirms that major decisions about California gaming have to be made by state lawmakers and not through administrative actions.
“For more than a year, we have said this case is about far more than gaming – it is about whether the attorney general and his regulators can bypass the Legislature and unilaterally rewrite decades of established law,” Kyle Kirkland, the association’s president, said in a statement emailed to The Record. “... The court delivered a clear answer: they cannot.”
The association alleged that the new regulations did not protect the public but instead served the interests of a small number of tribal casinos – at the expense of scores of cardrooms around the state that generate revenues for local governments.
“The court rejected that effort and reaffirmed that the Bureau abused its discretion and cannot simply rewrite the law to achieve a political outcome,” Kirkland said.
Tribal casinos have argued that they have been given exclusive rights to offer blackjack-style games, and tribes have also been key donors to California politicians, including Bonta.
The California Nations Indian Gaming Association did not respond to a request for comment.
The regulations would have barred cardrooms from being venues for blackjack-style games in which the goal is to have a hand adding up to 21 and would have added new limitations on banked games using third-party “player-dealers.”
Kirkland argued that the rules would have been devastating for those who depend on cardroom revenues and indicated that local governments use revenues generated from cardrooms for public services such as police, parks and libraries.
In a report issued last year, Bonta’s department acknowledged that the new rules could lead to the elimination of all blackjack revenues from cardrooms, while half of the lost revenue could be recouped with new games.
“This could represent a $68 million loss of revenues to cardrooms and a $34 million increase in revenues to tribal casinos,” the report states.
Thousands of jobs also could have been lost if the rules were allowed to take effect, according to the gaming association. Currently, seven cardrooms operate in Los Angeles County, according to Bonta’s office.
