- The tribe suspended play at its Vallejo preview casino, a 5,400-square-foot room running up to 100 Class II machines.
- Interior found the Band met the modern and temporal tests but lacked a significant historical connection to the parcel.
- Chairman Shawn Davis said the tribe will move quickly to challenge the July 31 decision in federal court.
- The reversal blocks the Class III tier that would have carried house-banked table games at the $700 million resort.
VALLEJO, Calif. – The Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians suspended gaming at its week-old Vallejo casino after the Department of the Interior withdrew the site’s gaming eligibility on July 31. The tribe said it will challenge the decision in federal court.
The Floor That Went Dark
The preview room ran up to 100 Class II electronic bingo machines by appointment, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., inside two modular buildings totaling roughly 5,400 square feet on the Band’s trust parcel near the Interstate 80 and Highway 37 connector. It offered machines only, and it had been open one week.
“Gaming operations are temporarily suspended while the tribe pursues its legal options,” the Band said.
Class II covers bingo and the machines that play a bingo game behind a slot-style screen, and a tribe may offer it without a state compact. House-banked table games sit in Class III, the tier the withdrawn determination would have unlocked for the Band’s planned $700 million resort. Legal craps is a house-banked game, so nothing resembling it was ever on the Vallejo floor.
A Class III room in Solano County would have been dealt the way California craps is dealt everywhere else in the state, from a deck rather than a pair of dice.
What Interior Found
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs William H. Kirkland III signed the decision Interior released July 31, reversing the determination the department issued Jan. 10, 2025, in the final days of the Biden administration.
Interior’s regulations run a restored-lands claim through a three-part test at 25 C.F.R. 292.12: modern connections to the land, a temporal connection between the acquisition and the tribe’s restoration, and a significant historical connection to the parcel. That test is the gate on the restored lands exception at 25 U.S.C. 2719(b)(1)(B)(iii), the carveout the Band pursued.
Kirkland concluded the Band cleared the first two and failed the third. The Band “has not established a significant historical connection to the Parcel,” he wrote, and the site therefore “does not qualify as restored lands,” Tribal Business News reported.
The land itself is untouched. Interior executed the trust deed on Jan. 10, 2025, and the new decision withdraws only the parcel’s eligibility for gaming.
Where The Case Goes
Davis said in a statement that “the administrative record overwhelmingly supports the Tribe’s gaming eligibility.” The Band, he said, will “move quickly to challenge the decision in federal court.”
The same court has already worked part of this. Scotts Valley sued Interior days after a March 27, 2025 letter temporarily rescinding the January determination, and on Oct. 30 Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia split the ruling in Case No. 1:25-cv-00958. He ruled against the Band on all three of its Administrative Procedure Act claims but held that the rescission was final agency action that violated the Band’s due-process rights.
McFadden also held that the reconsideration sitting behind that rescission was “non-final and thus not subject to APA review,” which left the tribe without a challenge to the process that has now produced a result. McFadden wrote in October that the dispute was “likely far from over.”
The Tribes That Forced The Second Look
Four neighboring tribes pressed Interior to revisit the January approval. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, both Patwin, claim ancestral ties to the Vallejo parcel and hold a cultural easement over it that lets their members visit and preserve cultural resources there.
The United Auburn Indian Community and the Lytton Rancheria, which runs a gaming floor in San Pablo, opposed the project separately. The four took the Jan. 10, 2025 determination to court in three lawsuits filed in March and April 2025, and Yocha Dehe, United Auburn and Lytton Rancheria filed amicus briefs in the Band’s own case. McFadden’s opinion records the economic argument alongside the ancestral one: as the neighboring tribes see it, a Vallejo casino “would siphon their own customer base and harm their economic prospects.”
Yocha Dehe also sued the City of Vallejo on May 28 in Solano County Superior Court over the agreement that let the preview room open, alleging the city approved it without the environmental review state law requires. Under that memorandum of understanding, which the city council passed 4-2 on April 14, the Band pays Vallejo $502,000 a year for three years plus $100,000 in year one to offset service costs.
The reversal removes the nearest prospect of a new tribal floor in the North Bay, and legal craps in California stays where it has been, on compacted tribal floors dealt with cards. Kirkland’s decision closes the reconsideration McFadden held was not reviewable, and the Band said its challenge will follow in federal court.