California cardrooms celebrated a significant legal victory on Tuesday as a judge ruled against new restrictions proposed by the state on table games. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Darwin concluded that the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Gambling Control exceeded its authority by seeking statewide limits on gambling options at cardrooms. Such substantial changes, he emphasized, must undergo legislative approval rather than being enacted through regulatory means.
The California Gaming Association (CGA) issued a statement indicating that the court deemed the Bureau's rules invalid because it lacked the power to enforce statewide game restrictions. CGA President Kyle Kirkland commented, "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. Today, the court delivered a clear answer: they cannot."
A comment request from the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA) was not responded to by the time of publication.
How was California planning to limit cardroom games? In February, California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office introduced two rule packages intended to become effective on April 1. These regulations aimed to entirely ban blackjack-style games in cardrooms and alter the operation of player-dealer table games involving third-party proposition players (TPPs).
The CGA, alongside the California Cardroom Alliance (CCA) and Communities for California Cardrooms (CCC), launched lawsuits in response, arguing that the rules represented an unprecedented overreach by Bonta’s office. They claimed that these measures would threaten to diminish cardroom revenues by at least 50% across the state.
Regulators projected that cardrooms could potentially suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in lost annual revenue and significant job losses, while tribal casinos stood to gain over $200 million from the elimination of competition in card games.
The court’s ruling followed the granting of a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs in May, which halted California from enforcing the new regulations while the case progressed.
Kirkland described the court’s ruling as "a lifeline" for both cardrooms and the communities that depend on their revenues. He emphasized the potential devastation the regulations would have inflicted on working families, local businesses, and the cities reliant on profits from cardrooms. Kirkland also asserted that the regulations were designed to favor tribal gaming interests at the expense of local cardrooms.
"These regulations were never about protecting the public," Kirkland stated. "They were designed to advance the interests of a handful of powerful gaming tribes at the expense of local communities, working families, and established cardroom businesses. The court rejected that effort and reaffirmed that the Bureau abused its discretion and cannot simply rewrite the law to achieve a political outcome."
In response, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Gambling Control stated that it is evaluating its next steps following the ruling and promised to "respond appropriately."
The conflict between tribes and cardrooms in California is a longstanding issue. Kirkland's reference to tribes underscores a recurring contention over whether cardrooms infringe on tribal gaming exclusivity by offering table games that utilize TPPs instead of being banked by the house.
In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Tribal Nations Access to Justice Act, granting tribes the right to sue cardrooms without the requirement of claiming damages. Subsequently, an association of California tribes took action in Sacramento Superior Court on January 1, 2025, the first day they could file under the new law.
The tribes argued that cardrooms, by employing TPPs, created games indistinguishable from banked games found in Nevada or New Jersey, thus violating their exclusive rights to offer such games. However, in October, a Sacramento court dismissed the lawsuit, citing that the new legislation was preempted by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), preventing her from addressing the matter.
CNIGA Chair James Siva described the dismissal as "troubling," expressing concern over the court's reasoning, which he felt denied tribes a fair chance to seek justice against cardrooms.
