This may not seem like news to people from outside our area, but it has been the basis for a lawsuit that has just received a ruling in federal court. As background, a local Indian tribe has constructed a casino on the outskirts of Florence. The center of local opposition has been People Against a Casino Town (PACT).
PACT has tried various legal avenues to block the casino. The governing federal legislation is IGRA (Indian Gaming Regulation Act) and it requires the tribes to attempt to negotiate a compact with the state in which they will operate, which will determine certain intergovernmental protocols. Note that they are required to try, not to succeed. Oregon's governor negotiated such an agreement some years back.
The Oregon Constitution says that the legislature (and by extension the governor) must not permit a casino to operate in Oregon. PACT's remarkable position is that this means that the governor acted illegally by signing the compact.
Relations with Indians were ruled by the Supreme Court to belong exclusively to the federal government almost two centuries ago, so the position of the Oregon Constitution on casino gambling is moot. PACT, nevertheless, took it first to the Oregon Supreme Court, bypassing the ordinary lower court procedures, and were tossed out. When they started over at the appropriate level, they were told to take it to federal court instead.f
People with more sensitive minds would have seen a fatal problem at this moment. If the state courts, where issues of the Oregon Constitution are ordinarily resolved, didn't even see this as coming under their jurisdiction, that is just one step short of calling it frivolous. Undeterred, PACT took their case into the federal system and have just been told, unsurprisingly, that it is meritless.
A PACT spokesman said that they now have two options. One is to appeal again to the Oregon Supreme Court, another is to head to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. A third option leaps to mind. How about giving it up?
Oh, and to get back to an earlier point, should all of American jurisprudence since Independence be stood on its head and PACT prevail, it would mean that the local Indians would be under no obligation to deal with local governments at all, except under a compact which they would write and submit to the Secretary of the Interior for approval. IGRA is very clear that the failure of negotiations for a compact does not stop the casino. But people who are battling in court for a new Constitution would probably be hopeful about a new IGRA in the bargain. Who knows what they have in mind.
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