{"id":10311,"date":"2013-01-15T11:24:39","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T19:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10311"},"modified":"2013-01-15T11:24:39","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T19:24:39","slug":"trouble-for-riverboat-gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trouble-for-riverboat-gambling\/","title":{"rendered":"Trouble for riverboat gambling?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry to sound apocalyptic, especially since we just dodged that <strong>Mayan Calendar<\/strong> bullet. However, a brand-new <strong>Supreme Court<\/strong> ruling is sure to get the attention of every company that owns a riverboat casino. By a 7-2 margin, the high court ruled that <a href=\"http:\/\/mobile.latimes.com\/p.p?m=b&amp;a=rp&amp;id=3234598&amp;postId=3234598\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;anything that floats&#8221; does not constitute a vessel<\/a>. In an opinion penned by Justice <strong>Stephen Breyer<\/strong>, houseboats have been deemed the province of housing authorities, not maritime ones. We&#8217;ve long had the farce <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2343\" title=\"stl_admiral\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/stl_admiral-300x166.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/stl_admiral-300x166.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/stl_admiral-150x83.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/stl_admiral.jpg 475w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>of &#8220;boats in moats,&#8221; platforms surrounded by water, theoretically inoculating states like <strong>Mississippi<\/strong> and <strong>Missouri<\/strong> from that icky-poo gambling stuff. However, what would this latest ruling by the Supremes portend for floating &#8212; but permanently docked &#8212; riverboat casinos. Since they don&#8217;t meet the &#8220;used for transportation&#8221; standard set by Breyer and his colleagues, they suddenly find themselves reclassified as buildings. Will they have to resume nominal cruising? Perhaps <!--more-->not. Floating casinos may have actually caught a break from the Supremes, whose ruling would strongly suggest that they are no longer subject to <strong>Coast Guard<\/strong> oversight &#8230; so long as they stay moored. Maintaining the seaworthiness of riverboats can be a regulatory migraine headache for casino companies &#8212; in the case of <strong>Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong>&#8216;s former <strong>President Casino<\/strong> (<em>above<\/em>), it doomed the property to extinction. I don&#8217;t doubt that anti-gambling advocates are going to try and leverage today&#8217;s ruling against the industry &#8230; and somehow, somewhere, local authorities are pondering <em>at this very moment<\/em> how they might use it to squeeze additional tax dollars from those sinful (but oh so lucrative) gambling ships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry to sound apocalyptic, especially since we just dodged that Mayan Calendar bullet. However, a brand-new Supreme Court ruling is sure to get the attention of every company that owns a riverboat casino. By a 7-2 margin, the high court &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trouble-for-riverboat-gambling\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28,36,35,39,30,25,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10313,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10311\/revisions\/10313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}