{"id":215143,"date":"2026-03-11T17:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T17:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215143\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T17:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T17:25:07","slug":"california-cardrooms-file-lawsuits-to-keep-blackjack-ahead-of-rule-change-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/215143\/","title":{"rendered":"California cardrooms file lawsuits to keep blackjack ahead of rule change \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

California gaming groups filed two lawsuits in San Francisco Superior Court, challenging new regulations that would force the cardroom industry to eliminate blackjack-style<\/a>\u00a0games and other card games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s $5.6 billion cardroom industry<\/a> has stated the changes are so disruptive that many of the state\u2019s 72 cardrooms would be forced to close all blackjack-style games in California, pull back on other \u201cbanked games,\u201d and target thousands of layoffs.<\/p>\n

Banked games are those\u00a0in which a player goes against the dealer \u2014 rather than the house as are the table games blackjack, baccarat and pai gow.<\/p>\n

The lawsuits claim the regulations are an \u201cunprecedented power grab\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe regulations threaten to eliminate more than half of California\u2019s cardroom jobs and wipe out a critical source of revenue for dozens of cities,\u201d said Kirkland, noting that Bonta is now moving to shut them down without identifying \u201ca single public safety concern or addressing the 1,764 public comments about the regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonta was not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Bonta\u2019s new rules would upend the cardroom games.<\/p>\n

The new rules, which were submitted by Bonta and the Bureau of Gambling Control and approved by the state\u2019s Administrative Law Office in early February, go into effect April 1. They give cardrooms until May 31 to report how they\u2019ll modify their card games. The industry says it cannot comply with the rule because of their \u201cvagueness\u201d and belief they don\u2019t line up with their interpretation of what are permissible card games.<\/p>\n

The rules also\u00a0end their ability to have blackjack-style tables\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 a big money draw for cardrooms.<\/p>\n

Elected officials and administrative staff from Hawaiian Gardens, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Compton and Gardena \u2014 where the cardrooms operate \u2014 were so rattled by possible losses of tax revenue that they met last month to discuss how the regulations could create severe fiscal crises.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 together make up a bulk of the multibillion-dollar industry in California.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe very foundation of our city,\u201d essentially forcing it to cut essential services.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> by the California Gaming Association.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California gaming groups filed two lawsuits in San Francisco Superior Court, challenging new regulations that would force the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[387,7,383,13087,131,133,132,137,611,612,5518],"class_list":["post-215143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-business","tag-california","tag-economy","tag-gambling","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-orange-county","tag-riverside-county","tag-san-bernardino-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}