Californian Card Rooms Provide Surveillance Footage in Lawsuit
California’s card rooms have consented to supply overhead surveillance footage of their table games as part of the ongoing legal dispute with the state’s gaming tribes.
Table for playing casino card games. California card rooms provide footage in tribal gaming dispute.
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE:Court documents show that card rooms will provide video recordings of the specific games under investigation, referred to as “Subject Games”. The footage will cover operations on December 28, 2024, between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. Should this footage be incomplete for any reason, additional recordings will be taken from December 31. If neither date suffices, the involved parties will “meet and confer as soon as possible” to decide on suitable alternative footage.
The agreement specifically limits the footage to cameras that offer overhead views of the Subject Games. On January 14, Judge Lauri A. Darnell approved the arrangement. This lawsuit, brought by a coalition of seven tribes on January 2, is currently being heard in Sacramento Superior Court.
The Role of TPPPS in Card Rooms
The overhead footage is expected to play a vital role in the tribes’ claim that card rooms are infringing on their exclusive rights to offer casino-style games in California. Under Proposition 1A, only tribes can run house-banked card games, where players compete against the casino. Card rooms maintain that their games are player-banked and, therefore comply with state law.
However, since 2007, card rooms have used third-party providers of proposition player services (TPPPS). These independent companies, licensed by the state, supply employees to act as the bank in card games. Currently, there are 23 licensed TPPPS providers operating in California.
Card rooms argue that TPPPS are legally compliant due to their financial independence from the card rooms. They assert that this separation means the games cannot be classified as house-banked. Critics claim that the ties between card rooms and TPPPS are complex and lack transparency.
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A Long-Running Dispute
The tribes have opposed the use of TPPPS since their introduction nearly two decades ago, but as sovereign nations, they lacked the legal authority to challenge the practice. That changed on September 30, 2023, when Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 549 into law. The legislation created a way for tribes to sue the state’s 87 card rooms, and they moved quickly to file their lawsuit.
Card rooms have raised concerns about the potential fallout if they are forced to shut down. Many are situated in small towns that rely on revenue from these establishments to fund local services and infrastructure. In response to SB 549, card rooms spent $3 million in an effort to unseat four lawmakers who supported the bill in the November elections. Three of those legislators were defeated.
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