Gaming tribes request a restraining order against cardrooms in battle over ‘California Blackjack’

Just days after several gaming tribes filed suit to block “California Blackjack” and other Las Vegas-style games in cardrooms, the tribes requested a temporary restraining order on Tuesday to prevent the cardrooms from erasing any security videos of allegedly illegal games being played at their facilities.

Late last week, seven large gaming tribes filed a 153-page complaint against 96 cardrooms and related entities alleging that an arcane system cardrooms use to offer certain games  is in violation of state law.

Under Proposition 1A, approved by California voters in March 2000, tribal casinos have the exclusive right to operate card games using house money in California. These are so-called “banked” games like Blackjack and Baccarat, which pit gamblers against the house.

But cardrooms say they use a workaround that legally allows them to offer banked games through the use of third-party proposition players (TPPP), which are special, licensed businesses that work within cardrooms.

TPPP employees volunteer to act as the house or bank at every table where banked cardrooms are played. Before a dealer deals a hand of Blackjack, he or she offers all the players the chance to serve as the house or bank for a hand or two. Most gamblers don’t have the funds to cover that kind of action – but TPPP employees do. So TPPP workers, who must wear badges to differentiate themselves from the employees in a cardroom, volunteer to play the role of the bank.

Cardrooms say that by partnering with TPPPs they are legally able to offer banked games because they are not serving as the house or bank, the TPPP is. Tribal casinos, on the other hand, say the cardroom-TPPP system violates the law and they’ve tried to sue cardrooms over this before, but the issue was dismissed over a lack of standing by the tribes. As sovereign nations, judges have ruled, the tribes aren’t eligible to sue in courts.

Last session, former state Sen. Josh Newman authored legislation, SB 549, to give tribes the legal standing they need to raise this issue in court – but just for a limited time and just for this one issue. The bill passed out of the Legislature on Aug. 31, and it was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 28.

The tribes filed the case on January 2, the first day they were able to do so under SB 549, which went into effect on New Year’s Day.

As part of the tribes’ outreach to the many defendants was a preservation letter telling the cardrooms that they must “ensure that highly relevant and critical evidence in the form of card room video surveillance footage is preserved and not deleted.”

On Tuesday, the tribes raised the stakes, asking the court overseeing the lawsuit for a temporary restraining order, noting that “Despite requesting that Defendant Card Rooms confirm their agreement to preserve this highly relevant evidence in a timely manner, only one did so by January 7, 2025.” A hearing is scheduled to be heard on the issue Wednesday morning in Sacramento County Superior Court.