Tribal involvment in casinos/organized gambling - Research Paper Example

Largely, tribal involvement in casinos involves the Native Americans. Organized gambling refers to casinos and gambling operations on tribal land in the United States. Since these areas have tribal sovereignty under federal law, states may not enforce civil codes on reservations within borders of the state (Darian-Smith, 2004). Available records indicate that there were 460 gambling operations, as of 2011, run by 240 tribes. After the federal government gave tribes control over their economic development, some of them started operating casinos and other gambling places that conflicted local and state laws.

Several states challenged these operations, but a number of Supreme Court cases ruled in the favor of the tribes. These rulings held that tribes could operate full-scale casino gambling in any state that allowed gambling of such nature within its borders, as long as the details of the operation were set forth under a state-tribal compact (Evans and Hance, 1998). Tribal involvement in casinos should be strengthened in order to achieve social and economic goals of the tribes involved. Indian tribes have a special status under the United States law after the country’s constitution reserved for the federal government the power to regulate commerce among states, as well as with Indian tribes (Darian-Smith, 2004). . Therefore, these laws provided that regulation of a state of tribal activities including casinos, is generally limited to what is authorized under federal law, as well as federally approved agreements between a state and tribes (Steven and Kathryn, 2005).

More recently, there have been a series of Supreme Court decisions, which have dramatically expanded tribal involvement in casinos in many states. One of the most notable decisions was the February 25, 1987 ruling that is known as the Cabazon decision that expanded tribal casinos dramatically in California State and in other states as well (Evans and Hance, 1998). In this decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the California State and Riverside County should not regulate card and bingo game operations of the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians and Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.

This decision set in motion a series of state and federal actions- including two ballot propositions that expanded tribal involvement in casinos (Steven and Kathryn, 2005). While making the Cabazon decision, the court heavily relied on the principles that underlie tribal sovereignty. This ruling prompted a response from the Congress; in 1988, it passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). This Act provided a statutory structure for tribal involvement in casinos and gambling operations, as well as declared that congress should seek to advance three primary goals in authorization of tribal casinos: strong tribal governments; tribal self-sufficiency; and tribal economic development (Darian-Smith, 2004).

While tribal involvement in casinos have proved to have positive economic and social impact on the tribes involved, it has also proved to be quite ineffective in