Alabama Shuts Down VictoryLand, Again
In February, the long-running dispute flared again between Alabama officials and VictoryLand, a gaming facility in Wetumpka owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. When Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange sought a search warrant to raid VictoryLand, his application was denied by both a state trial court and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, but then was unanimously granted by the state’s Supreme Court. Armed with the warrant, state agents seized hundreds of VictoryLand’s gaming machines and cash. As a result, the facility – which operated greyhound racing and bingo, as well – has been closed since February 19. At the same time, the state filed a lawsuit in state court charging that VictoryLand illegally operated gaming machines and demanding that it be closed permanently as a public nuisance. State of Alabama v. PCI Gaming Authority, No. 29-CV-2013-900057 (Elmore County Circuit Court, February 19, 2013).
The tribe and the state have disagreed for several years over whether IGRA authorizes the operation of gaming machines at VictoryLand, which are legal under the federal statute only if they would be legal under Alabama law. The state closed VictoryLand for most of 2010 in a dispute over the nature of the facility’s electronic bingo machines; the state has contended they are really slot machines. VictoryLand reopened at the end of 2010 after surrendering its liquor license for the gaming floor.
In an apparently unrelated development, an Oklahoma-based tribe also sued the Poarch Creek Band, seeking to stop construction of a gaming facility on lands near Wetumpka that were ceremonial grounds for the Muscogee Creek Nation. In the 1830s, the United States Government forcibly relocated the Muscogee Creeks to the west. The tribe now asserts that the proposed casino site was a tribal burial ground and sacred place. Muscogee Creek Nation v. Poarch Band of Creek Indians, No. 2:12-cv-01079 (M.D. Ala., Dec. 12, 2012).
