Tribes Join Card Clubs for Legalized Internet Poker - Other Tribes Opposed

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, among other tribes, is teaming up with some California card clubs to push for legalizing on-line poker. The new group, the California Tribal Intrastate Internet Poker Consortium LLC, is going to try and get something passed before the end of the legislative year in September.

George Forman, the attorney for the Morongo Tribe, has written some of the language in a five-page bill draft, but they still have not found a legislator to carry the bill.

Other tribes, members of the California Tribal Business Alliance (CTBA) are not on board with the idea. They believe this sort of legislation could violate the exclusivity clause within gaming compacts that allows tribes the sole right to offer casino gaming in California. They believe it would create a plethora of lawsuits from anyone and everyone wanting to get into the business.

The cause has created strange bedfellows with Cheryl Schmit, of the tribal gaming watchdog group Stand Up for California, and Allison Harvey, the executive director of the CTBA agreeing on several issues with the LLC, noting that the consortium would be be headquartered in Delaware (avoiding income tax?) and that the Morongo are positioning themselves having a major influence where they will be able to appoint one member of the three person management committee, with the other two being elected by the rest of the membership. The tribe would have the central role in administrating the operation.

Schmit also believes that the current language in the draft is an attempt to get online poker around the legal restrictions on what types of games Indian tribes are allowed to offer. A section near the end of the draft states that “Personal, networked, or server computers are not included within the term ‘slot machine’ or ‘gambling device.’ Schmit thinks that clause is intended to do an end run around state law that outlaws computerized poker machines.

“What they’re trying to do here is fishy,” Schmit said. “They think by changing the definition, they’re going to get around the legality of it. They can’t.”

This all follows a bill submitted last year by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine which called for a study of whether the state could offer online poker in a way that would not conflict with the federal ban on Internet poker.

This last February, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) reintroduced a bill to allow online gambling. H.R. 2267 would set up a legal and tax framework for poker and other games on the Internet. On August 6, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) introduced S. 1597, a companion Senate version of the legislation.