San Francisco judge blocks new cardroom regulations

A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Tuesday struck down Attorney General Rob Bonta’s controversial cardroom regulations, which would have limited the salons from offering their most popular games.

Judge Richard Darwin ruled that the Bureau of Gambling Control’s new regulations, announced in February, exceed its authority.

In March, a group of cardrooms and third-party proposition players (TPPP) sued to challenge the regulations, which would have limited their ability to offer their most popular table games. Darwin granted the cardrooms and TPPPs a preliminary injunction in early June.

“For more than a year, we have said this case is about far more than gaming — it is about whether the Attorney General and his regulators can bypass the Legislature and unilaterally rewrite decades of established law,” said Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association, which represents cardrooms, in a statement. “Today, the Court delivered a clear answer: they cannot.”

The state is expected to appeal. The attorney general’s press office said in an email, “We are disappointed in today’s ruling but are reviewing our options and will respond appropriately.”

Several California cities rely on cardroom revenue to balance their budgets. In response to the regulations, the Los Angeles County cities of Commerce and Bell Gardens declared fiscal emergencies and put a ¼-cent sales tax increase on the June 2026 ballot, both of which were approved.

Commerce and Bell Gardens are home to two of the state’s three largest cardrooms, Commerce Casino and Parkwest Bicycle Casino.

The state’s own economic assessment projected that the new regulations could result in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the cities where cardrooms are located as well as hundreds of jobs in the cardroom/TPPP sector.

The Court’s ruling is a lifeline for communities across California. If these regulations had been allowed to stand, the consequences would have been devastating for working families, local businesses, and the cities that rely on cardroom revenues to fund police, parks, libraries, youth programs, and other essential services.

“The Court’s ruling is a lifeline for communities across California,” Kirkland said in the statement. “If these regulations had been allowed to stand, the consequences would have been devastating for working families, local businesses, and the cities that rely on cardroom revenues to fund police, parks, libraries, youth programs, and other essential services.”

One of the new regulations regarding blackjack-style games sought to bar cardrooms from offering contests where players or dealers can bust if their points exceed 21. Indeed, the new regulations not only called for a prohibition on any blackjack-style game where the target is 21 points but also forbid cardrooms from offering any games with the words “21” or “blackjack” in the name.

The regulations likely would have spelled the end of “California Blackjack,” a derivative of the popular casino game developed for use within California cardrooms where the traditional rules violate state law.

Cardrooms are barred from offering games that pit gamblers against the house, a prohibition that was intended to limit play to games like poker. That’s a throwback to the Gold Rush era, when lawmakers were worried sophisticated gambling operations would hustle gold miners out of their money.

But over time the state approved cardrooms to offer blackjack-style games that rely upon TPPPs, the subject of the other new regulation.

That regulation said the role of the house or bank, known as “the player-dealer position,” must rotate to two players other than the TPPP at the table “every 40 minutes or the game shall end.”

TPPP employees working contractually within California cardrooms volunteer to act as the house or bank at every table where quasi-banked games are played. Before a dealer deals a hand of blackjack-style game, he or she offers all of the players at the table the opportunity to serve for a hand or two as the house or bank.

Most gamblers don’t have the means to cover that kind of action. But the employees of TPPPs do. So TPPP workers, who often wear badges identifying themselves as working for a TPPP and not the cardroom in which they are based, volunteer to play the role of the bank. The new regulations require that two other people playing a quasi-banked besides a TPPP worker must now hold the player-dealer position every 40 minutes or else the game ends.

That would have limited the action on such games, which in turn would have limited the rake or fee cardrooms may collect.

The regulations were supported by California’s gaming tribes, which have long claimed that the cardrooms’ popular table games violate a state law that gives them the sole right to offer so-called banked games in which players bet against the house. Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the tribes the authority to sue over the matter in 2024 when he signed SB 549 by former State Sen. Josh Newman.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge later dismissed that suit, but the tribes are appealing.

“These regulations were never about protecting the public,” Kirkland said in the statement. “They were designed to advance the interests of a handful of powerful gaming tribes at the expense of local communities, working families, and stablished cardroom businesses. The Court rejected that effort and reaffirmed that the Bureau abused its discretion and cannot simply rewrite the law to achieve a political outcome.”

The tribes had no comment.