Experts say 2 lawsuits pose greatest threat to tribal sovereignty in decades

Editor’s note: This story was produced by a collaboration between The Oregonian/OregonLive and Underscore News. The Data Driven Reporting Project supported Underscore’s work on this story.

A lawsuit in Washington state and another before the US Supreme Court are part of a coordinated campaign that experts say is pushing once-fringe legal theories to the nation’s highest court and presenting the most serious challenge to tribal sovereignty in more than 50 years.

Maverick Gaming, which operates 19 card rooms in Washington and casinos in Nevada and Colorado, is challenging a 2020 law that allows sports betting on tribal lands only. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington state, alleges that the law created “discriminatory monopoly gaming between tribes.”

But it goes further, arguing that gaming agreements between Washington state and the tribes are based on race and therefore unconstitutionally discriminate against people who operate non-tribal casinos. This argument aims at the natural right of tribal states to govern themselves and at centuries of American law recognizing the political equivalence of tribal governments alongside their counterparts at the state and federal levels.

Advocates and legal experts say Maverick’s case and others like it threaten to return to the politics of the termination era of the 1950s, when the U.S. government sought to end the political status of indigenous tribes…