DOI Rules Against Vallejo Casino, Scotts Valley Band Plans to Keep Fighting
The U.S. Department of the Interior dealt a significant blow to the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians on Friday.
The DOI withdrew its gaming eligibility determination for the tribe’s 160-acre Vallejo trust parcel and forced the suspension of a preview casino that had opened just seven days earlier. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs William H. Kirkland III concluded that the tribe failed to demonstrate the requisite significant historical connection to the property, ruling that the Vallejo parcel does not qualify for gaming under IGRA’s restored lands exception.
Scotts Valley Chairman Shawn Davis said the tribe would challenge the ruling in federal court. “The administrative record overwhelmingly supports our gaming eligibility,” Davis said, adding that the tribe believes the ruling reflects procedural irregularities rather than a correct legal conclusion.
The timing is quite significant for all involved. The tribe opened its preview casino at 200 Columbus Parkway on July 25, operating out of modular buildings as a limited invitation-only facility while the broader $700 million development remained in the federal review process.
The Interior’s reversal arrived exactly one week later, forcing the temporary facility to halt operations and returning the project to legal uncertainty, as everyone buckles up for a high-stakes battle.
A Decision Nine Years in the Making
The Scotts Valley Band has been trying to build a casino in Vallejo since at least 2017, accumulating nearly $1.9 million in project-related expenses and beginning compact negotiations with California’s governor before the first reversal arrived. The project’s history tracks the full arc of what happens when a tribe seeks gaming eligibility on newly acquired trust land under IGRA’s restored lands exception.
The Interior initially approved gaming eligibility in January 2025, placing the land into trust for gaming, government operations, and housing under a Biden administration determination. That approval cleared the way for an eight-story casino, restaurants, bars, a ballroom, 24 tribal homes, an administration building, and a 45-acre biological preserve. The Trump administration ordered a reconsideration of that determination. In March 2025, Interior rescinded the gaming eligibility without adequate notice or opportunity for Scotts Valley to respond.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ruled in October 2025 that Interior had violated the tribe’s due process rights in the March rescission, vacating the withdrawal but allowing Interior to continue its reconsideration with proper notice and procedure. The tribe called that ruling a victory for tribal sovereignty. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, the leading opponent of the project, called it another opportunity for Interior to stop what it characterized as a flawed proposal.
Friday’s determination is the product of that properly noticed reconsideration. This time, the procedural objection is not available. The substantive question, whether Scotts Valley has a sufficient historical connection to the Vallejo parcel, produced the same answer Interior reached in March 2025, just through a process that satisfies the due process requirement the court identified.
The Restored Lands Test and Its Ambiguity
The IGRA restored lands exception is one of the more contested provisions in tribal gaming law. Under the general rule, tribes may conduct gaming only on land held in trust as of October 1988 when IGRA was enacted. The restored lands exception allows gaming on land taken into trust after 1988 if the tribe demonstrates that the land is part of the tribe’s last reservation, is within a defined geographic area, and that the tribe has maintained a modern and historical connection to the land.
The dispute between Scotts Valley and its tribal opponents centers on whether former Chief Shuk Augustine, who died in 1903, lived in Vallejo and used the land where the casino would be built. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation disputed that claim, arguing that Augustine never lived in the area and that the land historically belonged to the Patwin tribes rather than Pomo peoples.
Kirkland’s opinion concludes the tribe has not demonstrated the requisite significant historical connection. Significantly, the opinion provides no conclusion on whether the tribe may game on the parcel under a different IGRA exception, leaving that question open. Scotts Valley’s federal court challenge will likely pursue both the substantive historical connection question and the possibility that a different exception applies. The tribe has not indicated which alternative exception it intends to argue, which of course is a major decision facing them moving forward.
The Scotts Valley Project Fight With No End In Sight
Four California tribes, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation, United Auburn Indian Community, and Lytton Rancheria, have consistently opposed the Vallejo project, arguing that a casino there would harm their own operations and that Scotts Valley lacks the ancestral connection to the site that IGRA requires. Friday’s ruling hands those tribes a significant institutional victory, though one they likely understand could be reversed through litigation, and will come with some legal battles.
The Vallejo City Council approved a memorandum of understanding with the tribe in June, and the municipal services agreement remains active. The city has a financial interest in the project’s eventual development. Whether that relationship survives an extended period of federal litigation is a practical question for Vallejo’s budget planners.
The preview casino remains closed, the Class II gaming hall is suspended, and the $700 million development is on hold pending the outcome of Scotts Valley’s federal court challenge, all of which are extremely costly to the overall project. The Interior’s ruling is a final administrative determination, but final administrative determinations in tribal gaming eligibility cases have a history of surviving appeals, being overturned on appeal, and surviving again through subsequent rounds of administrative reconsideration. The Scotts Valley project has already been through one full cycle of that process. A second cycle may now be underway.
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