Native American gaming comprises casinos , bingo halls, slots halls and other gambling operations on Indian reservations or other tribal lands in the United States. Because these areas have tribal sovereignty , states have limited ability to forbid gambling there, as codified by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of In the early s, Russell and Helen Bryan, a married Chippewa couple living in a mobile home on Indian lands in northern Minnesota , received a property tax bill from the local county, Itasca County.
Unwilling to pay it, they took the tax notice to local legal aid attorneys at Leech Lake Legal Services, who brought suit to challenge the tax in the state courts. The Bryans lost their case in the state district court, and they lost again on appeal in a unanimous decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court. They then sought review at the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Supreme Court granted review, and in a sweeping and unanimous decision authored by Justice Brennan , the Supreme Court held not only that states do not have authority to tax Natives on their reservations, but that they also lack the authority to regulate Native activities on their reservations. Under the leadership of Howard Tommie, the Seminole Tribe of Florida built a large high-stakes bingo building on their reservation near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The sheriff of Broward County, where the Native reservation lies, made arrests the minute the bingo hall opened, and the tribe sued the county Seminole Tribe v. Butterworth , stating that Native tribes have sovereignty rights that are protected by the federal government from interference by state government.
Controversy arose when Natives began putting private casinos, bingo rooms, and lotteries on reservation lands and began setting gaming prizes which were above the maximum legal limit of the state. The Natives argued for sovereignty over their reservations to make them immune from state laws such as Public Law , which granted states to have criminal jurisdiction over Native reservations.
