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A California court has struck down regulations adopted by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Bureau of Gambling Control that targeted the state’s cardroom industry, ruling the agency exceeded its authority by attempting to restrict table games on a statewide basis.
Richard Darwin of the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that the Bureau, a division of the California Department of Justice, lacked the authority to impose the challenged regulations, according to a statement released on Thursday by the California Gaming Association.
The regulations would have outlawed or significantly restricted table games that licensed cardrooms across California have operated for decades. The association argued the measures would have cut industry revenues by about half, forcing some cardrooms to close or reduce operations while threatening thousands of jobs and tax revenues relied upon by local governments.
The court found that the Bureau is responsible for enforcing California’s gaming laws rather than rewriting them through regulation, according to the association.
“For more than a year, we have said this case is about far more than gaming – it is about whether the Attorney General and his regulators can bypass the Legislature and unilaterally rewrite decades of established law. Today, the Court delivered a clear answer: they cannot,” Kyle Kirkland, President of the California Gaming Association, said in a statement.
The ruling is set to protect communities that depend on cardroom tax revenues to help fund police, parks, libraries, youth programmes and other public services, Kirkland stated, describing it as “a lifeline for communities across California.”
“These regulations were never about protecting the public,” the association President added. “They were designed to advance the interests of a handful of powerful gaming tribes at the expense of local communities, working families, and established cardroom businesses. The Court rejected that effort and reaffirmed that the Bureau abused its discretion and cannot simply rewrite the law to achieve a political outcome.”