For Kyle Kirkland, it’s a matter of money talking — and of tribal-casino money talking loudest. That, he said, is at the root of new regulations impinging on California card rooms.
“The entire set of regulations is flawed in terms of its premise and presentation,” said Kirkland, owner of Fresno’s Club One Casino. The rules he was talking about would bar Club One and other card rooms from offering blackjack. They would also inhibit the use of “third-party proposition players” (or TPPPs), who act as the bank on blackjack games.
By employing TPPPs, card rooms have been able to offer blackjack for 19 years, getting around a prohibition on house games, including baccarat. That has irked the Golden State’s gaming tribes.
Until special action by the legislature in 2024, the tribes lacked standing to sue. Once they gained a one-time exemption, they litigated against card-room blackjack, only to see their case dismissed in October 2025. Simultaneously, California Attorney General Rob Bonta was incubating the new rules, which would remove non-tribal blackjack.
For Kirkland, that action is “100 percent politically motivated. The tribes are bigger donors to Rob Bonta than the card rooms are. The only people I’ve seen complain about blackjack or our player-dealer games, which are popular, are tribal lobbyists. There’s no question that they spend an awful lot of money in Sacramento.”
The club owner, and president of the California Gaming Association, went on to complain that Bonita’s action (which goes into effect on April 1) was “a 180-degree pivot from how prior attorney generals have interpreted our table games. If you could identify something that was really legitimate, we’d listen. But in the absence of that, you just have to conclude that it’s politically motivated.”
To that end, the CGA and its proposition players are suing California in litigation announced on March 9. Their argument for injunctive relief is both legal and financial, citing the state’s own projections of hundreds of job losses at card rooms and greatly diminished revenue.
The card rooms’ legal argument is threefold: Bonta lacks authority to act; he did so improperly; and the new regulations are substantively flawed. (Bonta’s office did not respond to multiple message from CDC Gaming. California Nations Indian Gaming and legal expert I. Nelson Rose were also unresponsive.)
Victor Rocha, conference chairman of the Indian Gaming Association, wasn’t having any of it. “It was in violation of the spirit of the law,” he said of card-room blackjack. “They knew this day was coming. So for them to act all incredulous is disingenuous.”
Rocha pointed to the circumstances in 2007 when California gambling regulators approved non-tribal blackjack. On December 20 of that year, in his last month as director of the Division of Gaming Control, Robert Lytle issued an opinion letter that stated that banked games were permissible in card rooms.
By 2008, Lytle was working for a card room. His conduct there landed him in such disgrace that he was permanently barred from California’s gaming industry.
“For what Lytle did for the card rooms, they should build a statue of him in front of every card room in the state,” fellow regulator (and lone dissenter) Richard Schuetz told Capitol Weekly in 2023. (Schuetz was unavailable for comment.)
Kirkland noted that none of California’s attorneys general from 2007 to 2022 saw fit to take issue with Lytle’s opinion. And Bonta’s public-comment period, which elicited 1,764 responses? “Window dressing.”
The pre-Bonta lack of attorney-general action still rankles Rocha. He had no kind words for such previous AGs as Jerry Brown (“He sat on his ass”) or Kamala Harris (“She was just passing through”). As for Xavier Becerra, “At least we believed things were moving in the right way.”
Card-club indignation, Rocha said, is “typical for these guys.” He painted the card-club industry as bad actors, citing a history of money-laundering cases as recent as the $900,000 FinCEN fine on Lake Elsinore Hotel & Casino in October 2024.
“It’s one of the dirtiest industries in the country. It’s made California a laughing stock. And it was a matter of time before the attorney general stepped in,” Rocha fumed. “Because the California Gambling Control Commission wouldn’t do it.”
“There’s no new showing of harm,” Kirland responded. “There’s no new court ruling.” What there will be, he says, is devastating economic harm to an industry that generates $5.6 billion in annual economic impact and employs 20,000 Californians.
“Thousands of communities are reliant on card-room tax revenues. All of these would be devastated if these regulations went into effect, so there’s definitely economic harm from them,” said Kirkland.
Blackjack represents 20 percent of the revenue for Kirkland’s Fresno club, he said. “I know of other card rooms where it goes up to 70 percent.” He argued that the card clubs were already outgunned by the tribal casinos in terms of what they could offer. “They offer guests slot machines, craps, roulette, and other games. We have table games, some poker games … and blackjack is the most popular table game.”
Nor would the devastation fall on card rooms alone, Kirkland continued. He cited communities such as Gardena, City of Commerce, and Hawaiian Gardens as dependents of the card-room industry, predominantly reliant on the taxes it engenders.
“Seventy percent of Hawaiian Gardens’ budget comes from tax revenues from the card room,” Kirland argued. “We’re not just talking about changing library hours. We’re talking about laying off police forces.”
Such arguments cut no ice with Rocha. He called it “the El Chapo defense,” referring to the notorious cartel leader. “They’ve clearly been running an illegal business,” he said of the card rooms. “El Chapo had people working for him too. They had jobs, they had families.”
For Kirkland, it boiled down to survival. Half of the California card rooms, he predicted, would be wiped out under Bonta’s directives. He even found black humor in it.
“If I’m operating a full-service restaurant and someone came in today and said, ‘That’s great, but you can’t serve meat or fish or alcohol anymore,’ I’d have to rethink it,” Kirkland said with a laugh, “and figure out if I can actually operate a vegan restaurant in the same footprint with the same people.”
