Sacramento-area gaming tribes sue feds to block proposed Bay Area ‘mega-casino’
The tribe behind Lincoln’s Thunder Valley Casino Resort is suing the U.S. Department of Interior in federal court to stop a planned mega-casino from being built near Vallejo, calling the decision “a blatant violation of federal law.”
The United Auburn Indian Community of the Auburn Rancheria says the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ plans approved in the waning days of the Biden presidency were illegal and that federal officials ignored the law in approving the project.
“The approval of this casino is a blatant violation of federal law and sets a dangerous precedent for tribes that have followed the established rules for Indian gaming,” said John L. Williams, chairman of the United Auburn Indian Community, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “For decades, our tribe has worked to uphold the integrity of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and prevent opportunistic gaming proposals that ignore history and harm responsible tribal governments.”
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act requires tribal governments whose federal recognition has been restored to demonstrate their historic connection to any land they seek for gaming purposes. It is one of several federal laws alleged in the lawsuit to have been broken by Interior officials in approving plans for the Bay Area casino.
The planned 615,000-square-foot casino and development, near two Bay Area freeways but 100 miles from its ancestral Lake County homelands, has drawn bitter opposition from Northern California tribes including Yocha Dehe Nation, which owns and operates Cache Creek Casino Resort, as well as from residents concerned about the project’s environmental and fiscal implications. Yocha Dehe officials said the proposed development would sit on Patwin, not Pomo, land.
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the non-gaming Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation have filed companion suits seeking to overturn the casino project.
“Defendants’ decision was ... unlawful many times over,” attorneys for United Auburn argued in the tribe’s filing in Washington, D.C., federal court. “In their haste to ensure approval of the Scotts Valley application, defendants disregarded countless legal and procedural guardrails against abusive and unreasoned agency decision making.”
In a statement Tuesday, the Interior Department declined to comment on the suit.
“The Department of the Interior reaffirms its unwavering commitment to conserving and managing the nation’s natural and cultural resources, upholding tribal trust responsibilities, and overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people, but department policy is to not comment on litigation.”
The Lake County-based tribe has been turned away in past attempts to build a casino on land not considered its ancestral home.
The United Auburn and Yocha Dehe opposed Scotts Valley’s earlier “restored lands” applications to allow it to pursue gaming after its federal recognition was restored in 1991.
Scotts Valley unveiled plans in 2005 for a 225,000-square-foot site in Richmond but the Interior Department denied Scotts Valley’s request in 2012, saying the tribe had no historical connection to Richmond or that area’s first peoples, the Suisun Patwin tribe, according to the lawsuit. A 2016 application for a 128-acre parcel in Vallejo was similarly rejected.
Attorneys reminded the D.C. court of the decisions in Monday’s filing.
“The Vallejo Site is not within Scotts Valley’s homeland. The Vallejo Site lies within the ancestral lands of the Patwin people,” the complaint read. “Scotts Valley has instead pursued multiple sites well outside its traditional homeland because of their greater moneymaking potential, closer to potential gambling markets along major freeways in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area.”
In the suit, United Auburn attorneys say the Scotts Valley Band failed to consult them and other neighboring tribes on its plans and say Interior officials ignored tribal officials’ concerns and shut them out of key meetings in the years before granting federal approval to the casino plan.
In a January statement, Yoche Dehe officials blasted Interior’s approval of the project as a “shameful, illegal decision,” and accused the department of working in secret to push the project toward approval.
“It is difficult to believe that a group of politicians who claim to care about respecting tribal rights and sovereignty would give away historic Patwin homelands without ever consulting us. The hypocrisy is staggering,” Yocha Dehe Chairman Anthony Roberts said in the statement. “For tribes like ours, nothing is more important than our ancestral homelands. To see our land and cultural resources taken away for the benefit of wealthy investors is painful beyond words.”
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