California’s card rooms have agreed to provide overhead surveillance footage of their table games in the ongoing lawsuit with the state’s gaming tribes.
According to court filings, the card rooms have agreed to provide surveillance footage of the games currently under scrutiny, referred to as “Subject Games”.
This footage is to come from operations on 28 December 2024 from 12.00am to 11.59pm. If that footage is incomplete for whatever reason, additional footage is to be taken from 31 December. If neither of those dates work, the parties “will meet and confer as soon as possible regarding
additional footage” that may be preserved.
Notably, all footage will be “limited to the cameras that provide an overhead view of the Subject Games”. Judge Lauri A Darnell approved the order on 14 January. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of seven tribes on 2 January, is being heard in Sacramento Superior Court.
The use of TPPPS at issue
Overhead footage of the games is likely to be central to the tribes’ argument that the card rooms are violating their exclusivity for casino gaming in the state. Under Proposition 1A, only tribes are allowed to offer house-banked card games, in which players play against the casino. Card rooms contend that their games are player-banked and therefore legal.
But starting in 2007, card rooms adopted third-party providers of proposition player services, or TPPPS. These are independent companies licensed by the state whose employees act as the bank in card games. Most casual players don’t have the funds or desire to act as the bank, so TPPPS do it for them. There are currently 23 licensed TPPPS providers.
Card rooms contend that the use of TPPPS is legal because the providers are financially independent. Because of this separation, they argue, the use of TPPPS does not equate to house-banking games. As Capitol Weekly reported in 2023, however, the relationships between card rooms and TPPPS providers are interwoven and very murky.
Lawsuit is years in the making
Tribes have fought the use of TPPPS since their introduction nearly 20 years ago. But as sovereign nations, they had no legal recourse to follow.
That changed on 30 September when Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB549 into law, which carved out one opportunity to sue the state’s 87 card rooms. The deadline to do so was 1 April, but tribes wasted no time filing their suit.
Before and after the enactment of SB 549, card rooms have cautioned about the secondary effects that would result from their closure. Most are located in small communities that depend on revenue share for services and infrastructure. As revenge for the bill, card rooms spent $3 million (£2.45 million/€2.9 million) in efforts to defeat four lawmakers who supported SB 549 in the November election. Three ended up losing their races.
“We really don’t want to be the sort of, you know, the Rodney Dangerfield of industries. We want to be respected,” Keith Sharp, a lawyer for Hawaiian Gardens Casino, told CalMatters. “We (will) work hard to continue to gain respect and protect our employees, protect our cities, protect our businesses.”
