Abstract

The popularity of Indian gaming has boomed in recent years, bringing casinos to Americans throughout the country and resulting in great financial gains to those tribes who have been able to capitalize on the trend. Over the last decade tribal gaming revenue in the United States has increased four-fold - from just over six billion dollars in 1996 to an incredible twenty-five billion dollars in 2006. As of 2006, gaming was occurring at three hundred eighty-seven locations and in twenty-nine states, stretching from Florida to Alaska. This growth in revenue, in addition to the moral issues that surround gambling of any type, have led and surely will lead in the future to conflicts between Indian tribes and states wishing to regulate gaming and to get their hands on a piece of the ever-enlarging pie. This conflict played out first in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, as California attempted to regulate high-stakes bingo games and prohibit poker games being conducted on the tribe's reservations within the state. After an analysis of both state and federal law, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that "[s]tate regulation would impermissibly infringe on tribal government," and thus the state could not regulate any gaming on tribal land. The result of the case thereby "cleared the way for the multimillion-dollar betting parlors on Indian Land" and prompted Congress to respond with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), allowing states back into the picture. This comment will analyze IGRA and the surrounding issues, which were further complicated by the Supreme Court in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, and have, at least for now, culminated in Texas v. U.S.