SARATOGA, California — California's private cardrooms can continue offering blackjack and other table games after a San Francisco judge ruled that state Attorney General Rob Bonta overstepped his authority when he sought to ban the games.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Darwin found that Bonta's Bureau of Gambling Control did not have the legal power to issue statewide regulations severely restricting the games at dozens of private gambling halls. The decision, reported July 6, affirmed a ruling Darwin issued on a temporary basis in May.
The ruling is the latest in a years-long battle between the state's casino-owning Native American tribes and the private cardrooms that compete with them. Tribes have argued that state law gives them exclusive rights to offer house-banked table games like blackjack, and they have spent tens of millions of dollars pressing that case in courts, at the ballot box, and before the Legislature without success.
Cardroom operators praised the decision as confirmation that their business model is lawful. Kyle Kirkland, a Fresno cardroom owner and president of the California Gaming Association, said the case was about whether the attorney general could "bypass the Legislature and unilaterally rewrite decades of established law." He said the court's answer was clear.