California v. Cabazon Band
| California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians | |
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| Argued December 9, 1986 Decided February 25, 1987 |
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| Full case name | California, et al. v. Cabazon band of Mission Indians, et al. |
| Citations | 480 U.S. 202 (more)
107 S. Ct. 1083; 94 L. Ed. 2d 244; 55 U.S.L.W. 4225
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| Prior history | 783 F.2d 900 (affirmed and remanded) |
| Holding | |
| Indian reservations may not engage in a form of gaming when that form is illegal in the state; conversely, Indian reservations may engage in a form of gaming when that form is legal in the state. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | White, joined by Rehnquist, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Powell |
| Dissent | Stevens, joined by O'Connor, Scalia |
| Laws applied | |
| 18 U.S.C. § 1151; 28 U.S.C.S. § 1162 | |
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Superseded by
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| Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988) | |
California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 U.S. 202 (1987), was a case before the United States Supreme Court on the development of Native American gaming. The Supreme Court's decision effectively overturned the existing laws restricting gaming/gambling on U.S. Indian reservations.
The Cabazon and Morongo Bands of Mission Indians are two small Cahuilla Indian tribes that occupy reservation lands near Palm Springs in Riverside County, California. During the mid-1980s, both the Cabazon and Morongo Bands each owned and operated on their reservation lands, a small bingo parlor. In addition, the Cabazon Band operated a card club for playing poker and other card games. Both the bingo parlors and the Cabazon card club were open to the public and frequented predominantly by non-Indians visiting the reservations. In 1986, California State officials sought to shut down the Cabazon and Morongo Band’s games, arguing that the high-stakes bingo and poker games violated state regulations. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court before a decision was rendered on February 25, 1987.
The State of California contended that the Bands’ high-stakes bingo and poker games violated state law and requested that the Court recognize its statute governing the operation of bingo games. Riverside County additionally sought legal recognition of its ordinances regulating bingo play and prohibiting the operation of poker and other card games. California argued that under Public Law 280 (1953) Congress had granted six states – Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin – criminal jurisdiction over Native American tribal lands within the state’s borders. If California’s regulatory laws prohibited gambling on a criminal basis, then it is likely Public Law 280 would have given the State of California the authority to enforce them on tribal lands. However, if as the Cabazon Band argued, California’s laws on gambling were civil regulatory laws, then the tribal lands would not in fact fall under the lawful jurisdiction of the state.
The Supreme Court held, as the Cabazon band argued, that because California State law did not prohibit gambling as a criminal act – and in fact encouraged it via the state lottery – they must be deemed regulatory in nature. As such, the authority to regulate gaming activities on tribal lands was found to fall outside those powers granted by the Public Law 280.
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