Tribal and state authorities in the U.S. state of Colorado are locked in a legal battle over online gambling.
This week the Mountain Ute Tribe became the second American Indian Nation to join a lawsuit, initially filed by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe back in July.
The tribes are now challenging Colorado’s Democrat Governor Jared Polis and Colorado Division of Gaming Director Christopher Schroder, accusing them of blocking tribal access to online sports betting.
The Colorado Case
The case concerns the state’s first Tribal Compact, created in 1995.
This agreement effectively allowed Colorado’s tribes the right to self-regulate forms of gaming that are “permitted” in the Rocky Mountain state.
But since the advent of legal regulated sports betting in Colorado in 2020, state authorities have claimed that tribes may only run online sportsbooks if their platforms are geo-restricted to reservation territory — a stipulation that was never stated in the original Tribal Gaming Compact.
According to the Colorado Division of Gaming (CODOG), if a tribe wants to operate outside reservation land they must apply for CODOG licensing – and pay duties.
The tribes counter that the compact’s language allows tribal sports betting sites to operate statewide while being self-regulated.
Intimidation
The tribes allege that CODOG has been willfully hampering their attempts to launch sportsbooks by pressuring vendors and content providers, like IGT, not to work with them.
The case filing, listed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, includes an email penned by then-CODOG Head Dan Hartman supporting their claims.
It reads: “The Division recognises the Tribe’s freedom to govern tribal sports betting on tribal lands.
“However, the Division considers such gaming occurring off tribal lands but within the state of Colorado, and the facilitation of such gaming, to be illegal.”
The recent addition of the Mountain Ute Tribe’s case to the lawsuit tells a similar story of supply-chain intimidation by the CODOG.
According to both tribes, these actions have prevented them from launching online platforms.
Florida Legal Precedence
The tribes argue that the state Governor and the Division of Gaming’s interpretation of the gaming compact is incorrect. And that the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has already ruled on this legal matter in Florida’s recent West Flagler Associates v. Haaland case.
In the Florida case–which legitimised tribal online sports betting in the Sunshine State–, SCOTUS judges agreed that gambling online statewide, via servers on tribal lands, equated to tribal gaming — also known as the “hub-and-spoke” model, and was therefore legal.
Colorado’s Southern and Mountain Ute Tribes adamantly maintain that the attempt to control the online sports betting market by their state authorities is motivated purely by greed.
The state’s principal driver is to collect tax revenue from the tribe’s online gaming activities, which under CODOG regulations is charged at 10 percent, argue the tribal claimants.
Watch this space.
