There’s stiff competition for Troglodyte of the Year but Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has staked a prohibitive claim. He’s on a crusade to shut down the state’s three private-sector casinos and he won an important victory last week. The state Supreme Court ruled that Marshall could prosecute Victoryland, White Hall Entertainment and Southern Star Entertainment as “public nuisances.” This renewed prosecution of a 2017 case, blocked by the lower courts, exposes Gov. Kay Ivey‘s alleged openness to gambling expansion as the sham we suspected it to be. Marshall is going to proceed forthwith to try and shut down Victoryland and its brethren (again), howling, “For too long, these individuals, businesses, and even elected officials have flagrantly violated Alabama’s laws.”
You suggested that since the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that the non-Indian casinos’ machines are illegal, the Alabama Attorney General will now go after the Indian Casinos. That case was previously decided. The Alabama Constitution allows Bingo. Both the Indian and non-Indian casinos use electronic bingo machines that look like regular slot machines (for customers’ fun) but actually are based on an electronic bingo game. The Indian casinos must conform to Federal guidance which allows them to have whatever is allowed by the state constitution. The Federal guidance recognizes that their machines are actually playing a Bingo game and Bingo is authorized by the Alabama Constitution so they are OK. The Alabama Supreme Court says “looks are everything” and if the machines look like slot machines then they are slot machines, even though they are proven to be based on a Bingo game, but their decision applies only to the non-Indian casinos. We have been through all this before, and now Alabama is shooting itself in the foot again. There are Federal standards for each type machine, but the Alabama Attorney General and the Alabama Supreme Court do not accept the Federal Standards, but their argument does not apply to the Indian casinos.