Bureau of Indian Affairs Releases Draft Final Ruling
Late on Friday, the Bureau of Indian Affairs released a Draft Final Ruling revising its regulations governing the review and approval of tribal-state gaming compacts. The most relevant parts of the document are at the bottom of pg. 91 and, at the end of the document, section 293.26 and onward.
We are still sifting through the rules, but it appears that they defer to the court’s decision in West Flagler Associates v. Haaland which was favorable to iDEA’s advocacy that IGRA does not permit customers outside tribal lands to access gaming servers on tribal lands. We note the plaintiffs filed a cert. petition to the U.S. Supreme Court but we view it as unlikely that cert. petition will be granted.
We will discuss the ruling in more details during our next member call on March 1, 2024 at Noon EST.