- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Gaming
Running Aces, a horse track and card room in Columbus, Minn., has lost its effort to bring back a lawsuit against dozens of current and former officials from three tribal casinos. A federal judge in Minnesota denied the company's motion to amend its complaint, leaving the March 2025 dismissal in place.
The case began in April 2022 when Running Aces sued 39 officials from casinos owned by the Prairie Island Indian Community, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The company claimed the casinos offered games not allowed under their tribal‑state compacts, such as Three Card Poker, Ultimate Texas Hold'Em, and Mississippi Stud.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, was dismissed in March by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz. The judge was receptive to tribal arguments that the Running Aces suit attempted to circumvent sovereign immunity — which prevents tribes from being sued unless approved by Congress or under special circumstances — by suing individual tribal employees instead. Holding those tribal employees individually liable for tribal operations threatened their ability to represent tribal interests, Schiltz wrote.
Running Aces later filed an amended complaint attempting to split its suit, filing requests for operational injunctions against the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community defendants, while seeking damages claims against the Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC) and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe defendants. Schiltz rejected the amended complaint in mid-August, writing the amendment was both delayed and insufficient to address the original problems.
“Relieving the...defendants of any obligation they may have to consider the Tribes’ interests does nothing to solve that problem,” Schiltz wrote in a court order. “There can be no question that imposing enormous financial liability on the individuals who operate (the) PIIC and (Mille Lacs) casinos — even the threat of such liability — is likely to severely hamper those Tribes’ ability to operate their casinos, which are their economic lifeblood.”
The rejection of the amended complaint ends the suit’s journey through federal court for the time being. In a prior story about the original dismissal by Minnesota media outlet Bring Me The News, Running Aces President and CEO Taro Ito threatened to take the matter higher, if need be.
“Obviously it's disappointing because we feel very strongly about our case,” Ito told Bring Me The News. “We'll take this to the Supreme Court if we have to.”
