Sign Up For Card Player's Newsletter And Free Bi-Monthly Online Magazine

BEST DAILY FANTASY SPORTS BONUSES

Poker Training

Newsletter and Magazine

Sign Up

Find Your Local

Card Room

 

Fight Continues Over $1B Massachusetts Tribal Casino

Mashpee Wampanoag Try To Secure Land To Build Las Vegas-Style Casino

Print-icon
 

As billion-dollar casinos move forward for Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts International in the state of Massachusetts, a Native American tribe continues to fight a legal battle over its proposed casino in Taunton.

According to a report from the Boston Globe, the case moved to the federal appellate level on Thursday, as the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe tries to obtain the reservation land needed to build the $1 billion gambling facility, backed by commercial casino giant Genting Group, rival of both Wynn and MGM.

The U.S. Department of the Interior gave the tribe 150 acres, but a federal judge later struck down that decision, reasoning that the tribe wasn’t federally recognized at the time of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The Department of the Interior is fighting on the tribe’s side for the land.

Local property owners in Taunton sued to block the casino.

The Bay State’s casino law allowed for three Las Vegas-style casinos in three separate regions of the state, and regulators even rejected a plan for a third full-scale commercial casino in favor of giving the Mashpee Wampanoag the chance to build a property.

If it’s built, the tribe’s casino will have roughly 3,000 slot machines, 150 gaming tables and a 40-table poker room. The tribe would pay 17 percent of gaming win to the state.

The casino was scheduled to open in 2017.