We have always understood a basic truth: competition creates opportunity, while monopolies concentrate power and leave working communities behind. Today, that principle is under threat.
New regulations targeting cardrooms, which were advanced by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and are slated to take effect on April 1, risk fundamentally reshaping the state’s gaming landscape in a way that favors consolidation over fairness. These regulations directly favor dominant gaming interests, as they are designed to divert gaming activity and revenue to a few wealthy tribal casinos. The consequences would land hardest on cities like San Jose and the marginalized communities that rely on local cardrooms or jobs and stability.
Attorney General Rob Bonta’s new regulations will severely restrict California cardrooms’ ability to operate their most popular table games, including by outright prohibiting them from offering modified blackjack-style and other games– these rules would reap economic devastation on California’s cardrooms.
In addition to restricting long-established, heavily regulated cardroom operations, they risk sidelining local businesses while tightening the grip of already dominant gaming interests. By targeting long-standing cardroom games and operating practices (many of which have existed for decades under state oversight), the regulations would tilt the market away from perceived competition and toward exclusivity. That is not consumer protection. It is market manipulation, and it comes at a steep cost to local economies.
For San Jose, cardrooms are not a side issue; they’re a source of jobs with benefits, many of which are held by Latino, Asian American, and immigrant workers. In fact, people of color make up 93% of Casino M8trix’s workforce.
They generate $32 million in tax revenue that helps fund essential city services – public safety, libraries, parks, and community programs that support families already struggling with the region’s high cost of living. Despite unemployment in the area going up 1.4% in 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that leisure and hospitality maintained steady growth in San Jose.
Weakening or effectively eliminating these establishments would mean fewer jobs, less city revenue, and more pressure on neighborhoods that are already stretched thin. The employment upswing in leisure and
hospitality could be at risk if Tribal Casinos succeed in monopolizing gaming.
Monopolization doesn’t just limit consumer choice – it erases pathways to economic mobility. When a single group gains exclusive control over an industry, workers lose bargaining power, cities lose revenue, and communities lose leverage.
The benefits flow upward and outward, while the harm stays local. In San Jose, that harm would be concentrated in communities of color and working-class neighborhoods that can least afford another economic shock. Cardroom workers from Mayfair and Washington-Guadalupe who can earn a livable wage are put at risk.
Policies that destabilize local employers while consolidating power elsewhere do not advance fairness; they deepen inequality. A regulatory framework that favors exclusivity over competition undermines the very communities state leaders claim to protect.
It replaces diverse, locally accountable economic participation with centralized control, leaving workers and cities with fewer options and less voice.
California has a responsibility to regulate gaming responsibly. Strong oversight, transparency, and enforcement matter. But regulation should not be used as a blunt instrument to engineer winners and losers.
If the goal is integrity, the state should enforce clear rules evenly across all gaming interests. If the goal is equity, policymakers must measure real-world impacts: job losses, reduced city services, and the disproportionate burden placed on marginalized communities.
Attorney General Bonta’s approved regulations fail that test. They risk dismantling a lawful industry that supports local economies while advancing a monopoly that concentrates power and wealth elsewhere.
That is not sound public policy – and it’s not justice. San Jose cannot afford to stay silent. Residents, workers, and city leaders must speak up now.
Ask San Jose officials to publicly assess the impact on city revenue and jobs. Contact state legislators and demand transparency, fairness, and policies that protect competition, not monopolies. Stand with workers in leisure and hospitality as well as nearby small businesses, whose livelihoods are on the line.
California can regulate gaming without monopolizing it. We can protect consumers without sacrificing communities. But only if we reject policies that trade local opportunity for consolidated power and insist that San Jose’s working families are not collateral damage in a fight for monopoly control.
Ruben Guerra is the chair of the Latin Business Association, a non-profit based in downtown Los Angeles that represents the business interests of over 800,000 Latino-owned businesses in California. He also currently serves as vice chair of the California Latino Water Coalition, comprised of business owners, farmers, and mayors of cities throughout the state