California gaming groups filed two lawsuits in San Francisco Superior Court, challenging new regulations that would force the cardroom industry to eliminate blackjack-style games and other card games.
The lawsuits, filed this week by the California Gaming Association, with support from the California Cardroom Alliance and the Communities for California Cardrooms, seek to block the regulations from taking effect and ask the court to invalidate the rules as unlawful.
California’s $5.6 billion cardroom industry has stated the changes are so disruptive that many of the state’s 72 cardrooms would be forced to close all blackjack-style games in California, pull back on other “banked games,” and target thousands of layoffs.
Banked games are those in which a player goes against the dealer — rather than the house as are the table games blackjack, baccarat and pai gow.
The lawsuits claim the regulations are an “unprecedented power grab” by the Attorney General Rob Bonta and would reverse decades of settled law and practice under which these games were approved as lawful by multiple attorneys general, including former Gov. Jerry Brown and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Kyle Kirkland, president and general manager of Club One Casino in Fresno, and president of the California Gaming Association, forecasts layoffs statewide approaching 13,000 in an industry with 20,000 directly employed by cardroom casinos and another 10,000 vendors.
“The regulations threaten to eliminate more than half of California’s cardroom jobs and wipe out a critical source of revenue for dozens of cities,” said Kirkland, noting that Bonta is now moving to shut them down without identifying “a single public safety concern or addressing the 1,764 public comments about the regulations.”
Bonta was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
Bonta’s new rules would upend the cardroom games.
The new rules, which were submitted by Bonta and the Bureau of Gambling Control and approved by the state’s Administrative Law Office in early February, go into effect April 1. They give cardrooms until May 31 to report how they’ll modify their card games. The industry says it cannot comply with the rule because of their “vagueness” and belief they don’t line up with their interpretation of what are permissible card games.
The rules also end their ability to have blackjack-style tables — a big money draw for cardrooms.
Elected officials and administrative staff from Hawaiian Gardens, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Compton and Gardena — where the cardrooms operate — were so rattled by possible losses of tax revenue that they met last month to discuss how the regulations could create severe fiscal crises.
Those Los Angeles-area communities with major cardroom casinos, including the Commerce Casino & Hotel, Crystal Casino, the Gardens Casino, Hustler Casino, Lucky Lady Casino and Parkwest Bicycle Casino — together make up a bulk of the multibillion-dollar industry in California.
Victor Farfan, councilmember with Hawaiian Gardens, where the Gardens Casino is located, told the Southern California News Group in February that the change in regulations would shake “the very foundation of our city,” essentially forcing it to cut essential services.
The city of San Jose has warned that cardroom revenues of roughly $30 million help fund police, fire and 911 emergency services, according to a social media post by the California Gaming Association.
The city of Commerce has already taken action to place a quarter-cent sales tax on the June 2026 ballot, in an effort to mitigate the serious shortfall in municipal funds that would result from the regulations, according to Kirkland. Other cities are considereing similar emergency measures.