As California is set to ban blackjack, Los Angeles’s card clubs and cities that depend on gambling revenue are trying to stop the change.
California’s Office of Administrative Law has greenlighted new rules that would ban card rooms from offering blackjack in April. Authorities want to close a legal loophole that allowed card clubs to offer blackjack and other banked games in which players play against the house. Those types of games are supposed to be offered only in Indian casinos, but the card clubs were getting around the restriction by using designated outside dealers.
Card club operators see the changes as an existential threat that will lead to job losses and reduced tax revenue for the areas where they operate. They have vowed to pursue legal remedies.
“The proposed regulations destroy the financial viability of the California cardroom industry, jeopardize thousands of working families and harm dozens of California communities,” California Gaming Assn. President Kyle Kirkland wrote in a letter to Atty. General Rob Bonta earlier this month.
There are more than 70 card rooms across California employing about 20,000 workers, according to the group. It estimates that the changes could cut the number of card room jobs in half and significantly reduce the industry’s positive economic impact.
A 2019 analysis commissioned by the California Gaming Assn. estimated that tax revenue generated by California card rooms was roughly $500 million a year, with $398.8 million in state taxes and $100.9 million in local jurisdiction gaming taxes.
Los Angeles County cities Hawaiian Gardens, Commerce and Bell Gardens would be among the hardest-hit, as they rely heavily on casino tax revenue, Kirkland said in the letter.
Card rooms in L.A. County generate more than $2 billion in economic activity and support more than 9,000 jobs, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said in a letter to the state oversight committee expressing her concerns about the new rules.
At Gardens Casino in Hawaiian Gardens, losing blackjack would result in the loss of a “double-digit portion” of the business, said Keith Sharp, an attorney representing Gardens Casino. He said that if it lost its blackjack customers, it would probably have to lay off as many as 300 of its approximately 1,300 employees. The casino has about 60 game tables, roughly a dozen of which are blackjack tables.
California’s Department of Justice said in a statement Monday that it formally introduced the proposed regulations in spring 2025, held two public hearings in May, and received and responded to more than 1,700 public comments.
“After careful review and consideration of the comments, DOJ did not make any substantive changes to the proposed regulations,” the statement said.
Card rooms have until the end of May to submit a plan showing how they intend to comply with the rules.
Bettors who want to play blackjack can still do so at Indian casinos, which won’t be affected by the ban.
Proposition 1A, passed by California voters in 2000, gave Indian tribes the right to conduct Nevada-style gambling, such as casino-banked card games, on reservations.
Card rooms have continued to offer blackjack and other “banked” games like baccarat by giving players the option to take turns dealing the game and by relying on third-party businesses that employ people to act as bankers.
The Bureau of Gambling Control for years accepted the practice, which attorneys representing card rooms say is “completely legal” and has been approved by Bonta’s predecessors, but the state’s new rules crack down on the use of these third-party businesses and tighten rules for “player-dealers.”
Gaming law expert Rick Trachok, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law, considers the practice to be a “transparent attempt to get around the constitution,” which expressly prohibits Nevada-style casinos.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously acknowledged in an unpublished opinion that the California Constitution grants tribes the exclusive right to casino gambling, though it did not have the power to force the state’s gambling commission to enforce it, he said.
The regulations mark a turning point in a decades-long fight between tribal casinos and the card room industry.
California Nations Indian Gaming Assn. Chairman James Siva said in a statement that the regulations are an “important step in combating unscrupulous and illegal gaming in California.”
“Justice delayed can sometimes still be justice too,” said Victor Rocha, who chairs the Indian Gaming Assn. and is a member of the Pechanga Band of Indians.
In California, card rooms date back to the Gold Rush. With an influx of young men and widespread alcohol consumption, gambling ran rampant, particularly in San Francisco, which in 1850 had 1,000 gaming establishments — approximately one for every 25 people, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The state outlawed many casino games in the 1870s, though that didn’t halt gambling.
In Southern California, scofflaws once operated gambling ships on waters they believed to be beyond the state’s jurisdiction, an effort that in 1939 culminated in an epic battle in Santa Monica Bay, The Times has reported.
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