The Jamul Action Committee (JAC) contests that the Jamul Indian Village (JIV) does not possess federal recognition thus rendering approval for its $400m Hollywood Casino Jamul-San Diego from the National Indian Gaming Commission (NICG) moot.
In September 2020, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Committee’s claim that the casino is unlawful under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). It ruled that Congress had expanded the tribal immunity doctrine to cover non-historic tribes and recently “created” tribal entities, like the JIV.
“Today, the Village enjoys the same privileges and immunities as other federally recognised Indian tribes, including tribal sovereign immunity,” the three-judge panel wrote.
But the JAC referred to a prior decision by the Supreme Court in Yellen v. Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation, in which, to use the Committee’s words, the Court “held that the use of the term ‘recognised’ with respect to Indian tribes is not a ‘term of art’ that equates with ‘federally recognised tribe’.”
These two issues — the NICG’s lack of jurisdiction and the JIV’s alleged lack of tribal immunity — form the crux of the JAC’s argument, but its petition to SCOTUS was denied on 4 October.
It made another attempt, but in an order list released on Monday 7 December, the Court announced that it will not reconsider the Committee’s petition.
The Committee first sued the NIGC and Department of the Interior in 2013, unsuccessfully attempting to halt construction of the casino by Penn National.
