A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Tuesday struck down new state gambling regulations that targeted California’s cardroom industry, ruling that the Bureau of Gambling Control exceeded its authority.
Judge Richard Darwin ruled that Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Bureau of Gambling Control, a division of the California Department of Justice, lacked the authority to restrict games on a statewide basis.
The court invalidated the regulations on that ground.
The challenged regulations would have outlawed or heavily restricted popular table games that licensed cardrooms across California have lawfully operated for decades.
Cardroom advocates warned that losing those games threatened to cut the industry’s revenues in half, forcing many cardrooms to close or downsize, jeopardizing thousands of jobs, and triggering a state of fiscal emergency in communities that rely on cardroom tax revenues to fund essential government services.
The ruling aligns with arguments made by California cardrooms, local governments, employees and communities that the bureau’s role is enforcing California’s century-old gaming laws, not rewriting them.
Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association, called the decision a check on regulators’ power.
“For more than a year, we have said this case is about far more than gaming – it is about whether the Attorney General and his regulators can bypass the Legislature and unilaterally rewrite decades of established law. Today, the Court delivered a clear answer: they cannot,” Kirkland said.
“The Court’s ruling is a lifeline for communities across California. If these regulations had been allowed to stand, the consequences would have been devastating for working families, local businesses, and the cities that rely on cardroom revenues to fund police, parks, libraries, youth programs, and other essential services,” he said.
Kirkland also criticized the intent behind the regulations, saying, “These regulations were never about protecting the public. They were designed to advance the interests of a handful of powerful gaming tribes at the expense of local communities, working families, and stablished cardroom businesses. The Court rejected that effort and reaffirmed that the Bureau abused its discretion and cannot simply rewrite the law to achieve a political outcome.”
California’s licensed cardrooms support thousands of jobs statewide and generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually for local governments, according to the information provided. Local governments, employees, labor representatives and other community stakeholders had warned throughout the process that the regulations would cause severe economic harm, including significant job losses and substantial reductions in local revenue.
Supporters of the lawsuit said Tuesday’s ruling confirms that major gaming policy decisions must be made by the Legislature, not through administrative action.