WICHITA, Kan. (AP) – Two tribes who operate their own casinos are seeking to join the legal fray in support of efforts by Kansas to block the Quapaw tribe from expanding its Downstream Casino in Oklahoma into southeast Kansas, arguing they have “significant competitive interests” in the outcome of the litigation.
On Wednesday, the state of Kansas and Cherokee County argued in a court filing that the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska should be allowed to intervene in the state’s lawsuit against the Quapaw. The state contends their intervention would be beneficial to the case.
Kansas sued the Quapaw tribe to keep it from expanding its casino into southeastern Kansas, arguing it would harm that state’s current efforts to build its own casino in the area. The U.S. Department of Interior also is named as a defendant.
At issue in the lawsuit is a decision by the National Indian Gaming Commission to allow casino gambling on the Quapaw tribe’s land in Cherokee County, Kansas. That land, purchased by Quapaw in 2006 for a parking lot, is adjacent to its Downstream Casino site across the state line in Oklahoma.
The federal government put the 124-acre strip of Kansas land in trust for the tribe in 2012, and the commission in November declared that the site could be treated as reservation land and used for casino gambling under federal law. The commission concluded the trust and qualifies under “a last reservation exception” in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that otherwise generally prohibits gambling on lands acquired after October 1988.
The Quapaw tribe is planning a $15 million addition offering table games, such as roulette, not allowed in Oklahoma.
But the Iowa tribe and the Sac and Fox tribe – both which operate their own casinos in northeast Kansas – contend the commission’s decision opens the door not only for the Quapaw to conduct gambling in Kansas. They contend it presents the potential for any number of other Indian tribes to come to Kansas, establish a minimal presence in the state and then seek to have land taken into trust regardless of the fact that it had no presence in the state in October 1988 when the federal Indian gambling law was passed.
They argued that the standard applied by the commission to the Quapaw land presents “the real threat” of tribes outside of Kansas entering the state to open up casinos and compete with their own tribal casinos.
Kansas argued in its filing that allowing the Iowa tribe and Sac and Fox tribe to intervene in the lawsuit will demonstrate that Indian-law issues are more complex than suggested by the Quapaw Tribe and the United States.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
