A San Francisco Superior Court judge has temporarily stopped California regulators from banning blackjack at cardrooms, blocking a move that would have hit about 80 private poker rooms and the taxes many local governments depend on. Judge Richard Darwin issued the preliminary injunction last month, and the state rules were set to take effect this week.
The ruling puts Attorney General Rob Bonta back at the center of a fight that has already lasted years and now carries immediate financial stakes. His Bureau of Gambling Control had issued regulations that would have threatened to wipe out taxes on table games, a revenue stream tied to cardrooms across the state.
That is why the case keeps drawing attention beyond the courtroom. California voters settled the broad question of tribal gaming in 1998 and reaffirmed it two years later, but the dispute between privately run cardrooms and casino-owning tribes has never gone away. Now a judge has said the state cannot enforce the blackjack ban while the legal challenge continues, leaving cardrooms in business for the moment and local budgets intact.
The money trail helps explain the intensity on both sides. Cardrooms have donated at least $244,000 to Bonta since 2012, while tribes have given $531,000 over the same period. Separately, 27 casino-owning tribes have donated at least $15.8 million to current members of the state Legislature, compared with at least $2.8 million from 26 cardrooms and affiliated companies. Mike Gatto said the stalemate keeps the fight going and keeps two powerful interests focused on the Legislature, which keeps the campaign contributions moving.
That tension is sharper because the donations are not evenly matched, yet Bonta still moved forward with regulations that threatened cardrooms’ blackjack business. Jonathan Underland, speaking for the attorney general, said contributions have never affected the decision-making process and said the constitution is a hard line that Bonta is committed to enforcing. Bonta is also up for reelection this year, and he stopped accepting campaign donations from the gambling factions before he began implementing the regulations.
The immediate question is not whether the dispute has ended; it plainly has not. The injunction buys time for cardrooms and the governments that tax them, but it does not settle whether Darwin’s order will stand or how long California’s latest round of blackjack litigation will run.
