Federal judge upholds Coquille Tribe’s Medford casino approval
A court has ruled that the intended land counts as restored land according to federal gaming laws.
US.- A US district judge in Washington, DC has agreed with the US Department of the Interior’s decision to allow the Coquille Indian Tribe to build a casino in Medford, Oregon. Three other tribes had asked the judge to cancel the approval, but Amit P. Mehta denied summary judgement to the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, the Karuk Tribe and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and granted the cross-motions filed by Interior and the Coquille Tribe.
The venue now trades as Ko-Kwel Casino Resort. It opened with about 30 Class II machines and has stayed open since. Plans entail a 16,000-square-foot gaming floor with 650 machines and no table games.
The site is about 170 miles from Coquille’s main reservation in Coos Bay, where the tribe already runs a Ko-Kwel Casino Resort, formerly The Mill Casino. Cow Creek, Karuk and Tolowa Dee-ni’ operate casinos within 150 miles of Medford and said the new hall would poach players and hit funding for tribal services.
The legal fight turned on the restored-lands exception in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. IGRA generally blocks gaming on land taken into trust after 17 October 1988, unless an exception applies. Congress restored Coquille’s federal recognition in the Coquille Restoration Act of 1989 and authorised the interior secretary to take land into trust inside a five-county service area: Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson and Lane. Medford sits in Jackson County.
The Coquille Tribe’s 2012 request to the Department of the Interior was initially denied in 2020, with the department citing the land’s geographical separation from the reservation and concerns raised by local and state governments. Nevertheless, following a subsequent review, the parcel was treated as restored land.
The plaintiff tribes said that reversal was arbitrary, but Mehta disagreed. “Plaintiffs may disagree, but the court is not empowered to revisit the decision so long as it is ‘reasonable and reasonably explained,” he said.
The three tribes could still take the case to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
