Tribal-state compacts

Tribal-State Compacts are declared necessary for any Class III gaming on reservations under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA). They were designed to allow tribal and state governments to come to a "business" agreement. A compact can be thought of as "negotiated agreement between two political entities that resolves questions of overlapping jurisdictional responsibilities Compacts affect the delicate power balance between states, federal, and tribal governments. It is these forms that have been a major source of controversy surrounding Indian gaming. Thus, it is understandable that the IGRA provides very detailed instructions for how states and tribes can make compacts cooperatively and also details the instructions for how the federal government can regulate such agreements.

Section 3A of the Act includes specific instructions for the process of developing a tribal-state compact. Tribes(Native Americans) are expected to request a compact with states if they should desire to have Class III gaming. (States have no jurisdiction over Class I and II gambling.) Following such a request, states are required to enter negotiations and deal with the tribes in "good faith". The original text of the act implied that if states tried to "stone-wall" tribal gambling, the tribes could look to the federal courts for support. But while the IGRA gives states unprecedented influence on tribal economic concerns, it also seeks to maintain the federal government as the "guardian" of the tribes. Accordingly, section 3B maintains the power of the federal government in this aspect. No compact will be valid until the United States Secretary of the Interior has entered the compact into the Federal registry. Also, tribes who feel that a state is not negotiating in "good faith" have the right to sue the states in federal court.

The topics that compacts may cover include provisions relating to criminal/civil laws of the tribe or state in relation to the gambling activity, the allocation of court jurisdiction between the State and Indian tribe necessary to enforce these laws, money the State should receive to defray the costs of regulating the gambling, and any other such subjects directly related to the operation of gaming activities. It also specifies that Indian tribe shall have the right to regulate gaming concurrently with the state, unless some aspect of the compact is broken.

The IGRA takes specific notice of the fact that the text is not "conferring upon a State or any of its political subdivisions the authority to impose any taxes, fee, charge, or other assessment upon an Indian tribe. This reference indicates that the Congress realized it was not following the norm of tribal governments operating independently of states.

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