High Stakes: MGM v. Malloy. Entertainment Giant Seeks to KO State’s Casino Protection Law.

MGM Resorts, the international entertainment company building a casino in Springfield, Massachusetts, has filed suit in Federal court seeking to have legislation enacted in Connecticut this spring to protect the state’s two Indian casinos declared unconstitutional. The complaint takes aim at the new Connecticut law that seeks to keep casino customers from traveling to Springfield to spend their gaming bucks by allowing the state’s two Indian tribe casino operators to build a third casino off tribal land. The Connecticut legislation precludes any other entity from operating the third casino.

MGM’s complaint raises two primary issues:

The Act violates the Equal Protection Clause because it is a race-based set-aside in favor of the two Preferred Tribes at the expense of all other tribes, races, and entities; and

The Act violates the dormant Commerce Clause because it discriminates on its face in favor of the two in-state Preferred Tribes at the expense of out-of-state competitors, all of whom are barred from attempting to develop a casino gaming facility in Connecticut.

The essence of the complaint is that the state cannot extend the lucrative tribal gaming monopoly beyond the borders of a tribe’s reservation.

MGM is represented by attorney James Robertson, a former interim Superior  Court judge whose behind-the-scenes generosity to felonious former Governor John G. Rowland cost Robertson his seat on the bench in 2004.