"Two motions are presently before US District Court Judge William M. Skretny in the Buffalo casino case. He was scheduled to hear oral arguments on both of them on August 21, but late last week he announced he had read enough to let him respond to both motions. He cancelled the oral argument and announced that he would be issuing his decision on or before August 26.

On July 8, Judge Skretny vacated the Class III gambling ordinance issued to the Seneca Nation of Indians by the National Indian Gaming Commission. Such an ordinance is required before gambling can take place on Indian-owned land; Judge Skretny’s ruling said the land the Senecas own in Buffalo is Indian country (in the narrow legal sense of that term) but it is not the kind of Indian country on which gambling could occur.

A week later, the plaintiffs (the group of citizens and citizens’ groups opposing the casino in downtown Buffalo) followed up with a motion asking the judge to turn that opinion into action, either by directing the National Indian Gaming Commission to take steps to shut the Senecas’ Buffalo gambling operation down, or, if NIGC did not respond appropriately, by sending US marshals do the job.

The defendants in the case—National Indian Gaming Commission chairman Philip N. Hogen and US Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne—did not at first respond to the shutdown motion. Instead, they submitted a motion of their own saying that because the Department of the Interior had recently changed its internal rules and its reading of the federal legislation changing all of this (the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulation Act, or IGRA), the judge should send the whole thing back to the National Indian Gaming Commission and let the process of applying for and issuing of an ordinance start over. (This is detailed in “The House Plays Two Cards,” Artvoice, July 10, 2008)

The Seneca Nation of Indians, which is not a party to the lawsuit but is obviously central to it, submitted an amicus brief to the court supporting the defendants’ motion."

Get the Story:
Silence in the Court: Where the Casino Case Stands (Artvoice 8/21)