The Case That Made Every Native Casino Possible
Near Palm Springs, California
The dinosaurs are across the street. Hold that image.
In nineteen eighty-seven, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case called Cabazon Band of Mission Indians versus California. The case originated from a bingo hall the Cabazon Band operated on their reservation, just off the Interstate Ten. California wanted to regulate it. The tribe argued that the state had no authority over gaming on tribal land. The Court agreed.
The reasoning turned on a simple legal fact: California permitted charitable bingo. If the state allowed any form of gambling, it could not selectively prohibit the same activity on tribal land. The ruling was about bingo. Its implications were about everything.
Cabazon Band versus California became the legal foundation for the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of nineteen eighty-eight, which in turn became the legal framework for every tribal casino in the United States. San Manuel Casino in the hills above Highland. Morongo Casino Resort down the road from here. The enormous tribal gaming enterprises in Connecticut and Minnesota and Oklahoma. All of them trace their legal right to exist to a bingo hall on the Interstate Ten in Cabazon, California.
The Cahuilla people of the Cabazon Band were exercising sovereignty. The Supreme Court recognized it. The Morongo Band of Mission Indians, Cahuilla and Serrano in ancestry, whose reservation is adjacent to these dinosaurs, operate one of the major casino resorts in Southern California a few hundred yards from here.
The concrete T-Rex sells creationist literature. The casino funds tribal government, housing, and cultural programs. Two enterprises visible from the same stretch of highway. One is a statement about the past. The other is the future.
