Ponca Tribe Scores Casino Victory Against Iowa, Nebraska in Federal Appeals Court

A federal appeals tribunal has upheld the Ponka Tribe of Nebraska’s legal rightfulness to hold built its Prairie Flower Casino inwards James Earl Carter Jr. Lake, Iowa.

The federation of tribes opened the casino inwards November 2018, despite veneer effectual challenges that sought-after(a) to derail the projection for to a greater extent than a decade.

On Monday, the Eighth Circuit panel of ternary judges ruled that the Ponca Restoration Act (PRA) of 1990 authorized the tribe to conduct business concern on the solid ground it purchased inwards President Carter Lake inwards 1999, and that includes gaming.

Land Dispute

Previously, IA Assistant Attorney General King John Lundquist argued the James Earl Carter Lake parcel was non eligible for a casino. That’s because it was non section of the lands restored to the tribe by PRA.

In fact, the Act only if specifically identified set ashore inward Knox and Boyd Counties, Nebraska — some 100 miles outside — as that which “shall live transferred to the land for the benefit of the Tribe,” Lundquist claimed.

But the venire wrote this did non mean the US Secretary of the Interior “lacks sanction to restitute lands elsewhere.”

“Congress has shown that it knows how to demarcation line a tribe’s ability to direct gaming on its put down when it wishes to ut so,” it continued. “The Ponca Restoration Act, past contrast, contains no more speech limiting gaming or the ‘restoration of lands’ for the Tribe.”

Quirky Geography

It’s non just now the State of IA that has been pursuing the Ponca through and through the courts, but also the State of Nebraska.

That’s because of the peculiar geography of Howard Carter Lake, a two-mile tract of Ioway that lies due west of the MO River and is surrounded solely by Nebraska. The unusual person was created past flooding that changed the line of the river around 140 years ago.

Carter Lake is inwards Iowa, but to all intents and purposes, it’s inward Nebraska. Meanwhile, the City of Council Bluffs is on the other position of the river, but also inward Iowa. It united the display case because it wants to protect its existing commercial message casinos, Ameristar, Harrah’s, and the Horseshoe, which antecedently got all the step from the other face of the river.

Collectively, the ternion casinos pay off around $80 1000000 inward taxes to the body politic to each one year, and an additional $2 million to the city, according to The Des Moines Register.

Prairie Flower

This is non the first of all time the Ponka have scored a bounteous effectual triumph inwards a federal court. In 1879, the tribe’s chief, Standing Bear, successfully argued that Native Americans were “persons within the substance of the law,” winning the right wing of habeus corpus.

The Prairie Flower Casino is named for Standing Bear’s daughter, who died during or shortly after the tribe’s forced “removal” to Sooner State II years earlier.