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- By Chez Oxendine
- Gaming
The Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ embattled casino proposal for Vallejo, Calif. has secured a new ally in the Coalition of Large Tribes, known as COLT.
COLT is an advocacy group serving tribes with more than 100,000 members in the Midwest and western United States. The group has 13 member tribes, including the Navajo Nation, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and the Spokane Tribe of Indians.
The group filed an amicus curiae, or supporting brief, with the US District Court for the District of Columbia in a case between the Scotts Valley Band and the Department of the Interior. The department, now under the Trump administration, temporarily rescinded a Jan. 10 approval issued by the Biden administration amid intense pushback from other local tribes and the California state government.
The Scotts Valley Band sued the Interior Department in response, alleging that a review of their $700 million casino proposal would cause “irreparable harm” to the tribe. COLT agreed, pointing to 2023 amendments to the land-in-trust approval process that would prevent anything short of judicial review from rescinding the project approval.
“Once the land is in trust (and it undoubtedly is), the eligibility for gaming is the exclusive purview of the National Indian Gaming Commission and the Department [of Interior] has nothing to do with it at this point,” the amicus brief reads. “Abundant federal policy supports finality and regular order in federal Indian lands processes and decisions.”
The band has sought an injunction against Interior’s review and potential interference in the Vallejo project. According to a report by Casino.org, a U.S. District Court judge seemed wary that the tribe would suffer “irreparable harm” for a project that had not yet broken ground.
Judge Trevor McFadden said the harm was “hard to see” if the Scotts Valley Band was years away from operating the casino. He said Interior’s process may not have taken into account how much money the tribe has invested in the project ($1.8 million so far, per Casino.org) and their future reliance on potential revenues.
In a statement, Scotts Valley Band Chairman Shawn Davis thanked COLT for standing with the tribe.
“This case is about more than one tribe — it’s about the basic right of all tribal nations to rely on final decisions from the United States government,” Davis said. “We are focused on moving forward with our project to uplift our members and create thousands of local jobs, and we continue making progress.”
COLT’s support is the latest development in an ongoing fight between the Scotts Valley Band and local tribes and municipalities opposing their proposed Vallejo casino project. The project’s January approval sparked a flurry of lawsuits from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, as well as rebuke from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The project is one of several controversial efforts to establish gaming operations on land disconnected from tribes’ existing reservations by acquiring land in a given area, bringing it into trust, and then seeking approval for gaming use. Previous Tribal Business News reporting points to a Koi Nation project in Sonoma County, Calif., and a Colville Tribes-backed project in Medford, Ore. that have also attracted intense pushback.
