Judge rejects California tribes’ latest attempt to kill blackjack at cardrooms

California’s dozens of private gambling halls can continue offering blackjack and other table games after a San Francisco judge ruled last week that Attorney General Rob Bonta overstepped when he tried to ban them.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Darwin ruled that Bonta’s Bureau of Gambling Control didn’t have the legal authority to issue statewide rules severely restricting the games at cardrooms.

The ruling, which followed Darwin’s temporary order in May, is the latest defeat for the state’s casino-owning Native American tribes. They have spent years and tens of millions of dollars unsuccessfully appealing to courts, voters, the Legislature and California regulators to put their only in-state competitors out of the blackjack business.

The tribes contend cardrooms have unscrupulously violated state laws prohibiting anyone but tribal casinos from offering “house-banked,” Las Vegas-style table games including blackjack, the most lucrative.

Cardroom operators say the ruling once again proves their business model is legal. It also ensures taxes that cities receive from blackjack revenues will continue to support local government services and cardroom jobs.

“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, a Fresno cardroom owner and president of the California Gaming Association, said in a statement. “The court delivered a clear answer: they cannot.”

James May, a spokesperson for California Nations Indian Gaming Association, didn’t return an interview request.

Bonta’s office said in an email that officials were disappointed in the ruling and are reviewing their options.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.