Judge’s ruling on Medford casino appealed

By Nicole Montesano

Smoke Signals staff writer

Three Tribes from southern Oregon and northern California have filed an appeal after a federal judge declined to issue a restraining order to temporarily halt operations of a new casino in Medford.

The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, along with the Karuk Tribe and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation notified the judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that they were filing an appeal of his ruling.

The Coquille Tribe has been seeking for more than a decade to open a casino in Medford, over the objections of other Tribes, including Grand Ronde.

After the Department of the Interior approved the casino in January, the Coquille opened for business. Opponents then sought a temporary restraining order to keep the casino from operating while their lawsuit against the DOI is proceeding.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Meta wrote in his ruling on Tuesday, Feb. 11, that the Tribes had failed to establish that the casino’s operation would substantially harm them in the immediate future.

The plaintiff Tribes wrote that the casino would harm them in multiple ways, including economic, sovereign, cultural, historical, environmental and ecological, stating that these would be “devasted” if injunctive relief was not granted by the court.

“Defendants completely disregard evidence that Coquille’s new territorial presence in Medford displaces and causes irreparable harm to . . . the aboriginal Indigenous peoples and Tribal nations of southern Oregon and northern California, including plaintiffs,” their argument stated.

Meta wrote that the plaintiffs assumed, without proof, that the casino would be developed faster than the timeline assumed by the DOI and failed to establish that specific programs would have to be closed as a result of lost revenue.

He noted that the Tribes fear the casino would be developed sooner, but said that “Irreparable harm, however, cannot rest on speculation. … Plaintiffs have not offered any evidence to show that Coquille intend to rapidly accelerate their gaming operations to create the magnitude of losses that the (final environmental impact statement) estimates is years away.”

Meta also noted that “There is no dispute that plaintiffs fund Tribal programs and services with gaming revenues and that a drop in those revenues will adversely affect their ability carry out those functions. … The question for the court, however, is whether the immediate impacts on Tribal programs and services will be ‘certain and great.’ … Measured against that standard, plaintiffs have fallen short. None have described in any detail how potential near-term revenue losses would concretely affect any program or service. They have not, for example, said that any program would have to be shut down or any service discontinued, or explained how a particular program or service would be curtailed during the pendency of this litigation. Nor have they described how they might have to reallocate resources because of a near-term drop in gaming revenues.”

The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe issued a statement by email.

“This ruling does not change the fact that this casino is illegal under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and was approved in the final hours of the Biden administration based on personal politics rather than policy,” it stated. “It’s simple - one cannot restore lands they never had - and the Coquille do not have any ancestral ties to this land.”

Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden have opposed the Coquille’s Medford casino, as has the Grand Ronde Tribe, fearing that it will open the door to an “arms race” in new casinos across the state.