Skip to main content

Compact Dispute Solution: End the Casino Monopoly


With Governor Stitt and Oklahoma’s tribes at loggerheads over the gaming compact, it seems like a good time to reconsider the tribes’ gambling monopoly altogether. While there is only one Las Vegas, Oklahoma is a casino state. And regardless of the dispute between the governor and the tribes or its outcome, Oklahoma will remain a casino state. The question we should ask ourselves is, why should the tribes be exclusively able to operate casinos?

As I understand the history, casino gambling exclusively allowed of tribes in other states arose out of a legitimate need for impoverished reservations to generate some cash flow. Reservations, in my opinion, are basically great big quasi-autonomous concentration camps. In Arizona, where I lived for nearly a decade, I found reservations to be sad, undeveloped, generally poverty-stricken places with a few poorly-exploited natural attractions that tourists could have attended in greater numbers if anybody had the incentive to promote them. It’s easy to understand why tribes in those circumstances would jump at the chance to generate a relatively easy cash flow from gambling attractions, limited to the geographic confines of the reservations, and why sympathetic lawmakers would agree to let it happen.

But Oklahoma does not have reservations. Consequently, tribal members have largely fully integrated into the prevailing culture and have benefitted by apparently becoming just as prosperous as any other group of people. Congress still recognizes Oklahoma’s reservation-less tribes, and this grants the tribes some privileges others of us do not enjoy. Given history, this might well be justified, but it is not apparent that there is now, or ever really was, a strong justification for the grant of a monopoly over an industry other than that it happened elsewhere. Casinos in this state are not restricted to specific territories, although the laws and regulations on permissible locations can be restrictive, confusing, and arbitrary.

Thus, casinos in Oklahoma are fairly ubiquitous, and they tend to be located close to the interstates and are common on our borders. That’s just good business. The largest casino is practically on the border between Texas and Oklahoma on I-35. As any frequent traveler on I-44 and I-35 knows, when headed north out of Texas on either of these two highways, it can be quite the adventure dodging all the vehicles with Texas plates slowing for the exits to the casinos. After mile marker 5 or 6, though, traffic becomes relatively clear.

That’s the main reason casino gambling will not be shut down in Oklahoma, no matter what happens with compact negotiations and legal disputes. Casinos bring too much money into the state, even with tribes being the primary beneficiaries of surrounding states’ inhabitants’ gambling habits.

So, if casino gambling is not going away and it’s already pretty much all over the place even with the difficult-to-understand restrictions on their locations, why should the tribal monopoly continue? A more competitive casino gambling industry is likely to bring even more money into the state. Competitive industries are generally larger and richer than monopolized ones. Sure, to some extent Oklahoma’s casinos compete with those in Las Vegas, Louisiana, New Jersey and other states, but the head-to-head competition that made Las Vegas great is relatively muted in Oklahoma by its limitation to tribes.

This is not just a practical issue. It is also a moral one. As Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) pointed out to a U.S. Senator in the movie, The Aviator, granting monopolies is downright un-American. For those who have a problem with making the expansion of the gambling industry a moral imperative, keep in mind that while casino gambling is exploiting a vice, so is selling liquor in a bar, and so is selling state-sponsored lottery tickets out of a neighborhood convenience store. If people want to keep casinos out of their communities, there are legal means to do so, some of which are far more likely to prevail over, say, a Steve Wynn wanting to open a casino than over tribes wanting to do the same.

So the bottom line is this. Let’s end the tribal monopoly over casino gambling in Oklahoma and open the industry to anyone willing to compete.

Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute and can be reached at bschlomach@1889institute.org.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of 1889 Institute.


Popular posts from this blog

More on Why Oklahoma Should Have Already Fully Opened

Governor Stitt has declared that some businesses can open on Friday. By May 1, all enterprises in the state will be able to operate more or less normally. Eventually, at some unspecified date, Oklahoma will be fully operating again. But the question remains, and must be asked, “Was the shutdown and extreme social distancing even necessary?” For several reasons, the answer is a clear and unequivocal “No.” Let’s start with this little gem from a blog by an Oklahoma State University academic. “Harvard University epidemiologists determined that continuing extreme social distancing measures into the summer months could actually result in more COVID-19 deaths than a ‘do nothing from the beginning’ alternative.” Now, it might sound like this only confirms the decision to open up now and not extend the shutdown into the summer. But in fact, the Harvard study has a lot more to say about how this epidemic has been handled than might immediately be obvious. The Harvard study recom...
Read more

Can Government Force You to Close Your Business?

1889 Institute takes no position on whether any or all of these measures are warranted or necessary, or whether their economic fallout would inflict more human suffering than they prevent. We are simply evaluating whether they are legal.   With the unprecedented (in the last 100 years at least) reaction surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19, questions that few living legal scholars have considered are suddenly relevant.   Can a quarantine be ordered?   Can a mass quarantine, lockdown, or “cordon sanitaire” be ordered? Can businesses be ordered to change their behavior?   Can businesses be ordered to close? Can state governments order these measures? Can local governments order these measures? My legal brief addresses these issues from a statutory point of view; it is clear that state law gives the governor and mayors broad authority in a state of emergency. They must, of course, do so in a neutral way that they reasonably believe will help preve...
Read more

Shut Downs Likely to Result in More COVID-19 Deaths than if Nothing Were Done

More people will die as a result of COVID-19 because we closed the schools than would have if we’d kept the schools open or if we’d brought the kids back to school in summer. That is part of the message from Knut M. Wittkowski, who headed the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University in New York, when he was interviewed around April 6. ( The Rockefeller University is a private graduate college focusing on biological and medical sciences, providing doctoral and postdoctoral education and with which 36 Nobel laureates have been affiliated.) In effect, the same message was given by experts cited by 1889 Institute in a March 24 statement decrying the plan to turn out public schools for the year. Dr. Wittkowski explains in detail that “herd immunity” is critical, indeed absolutely essential, to end a respiratory disease pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when at least 80 percent of a population has been exposed to the disease and...
Read more

What if Legislators Were Licensed? Well, Just to Make a Point...

1889 Institute, as a general matter, objects to occupational licensing. We have written about it more than any other subject. The scant benefits simply do not outweigh the enormous costs to consumers and entrepreneurs, and  the  burdens that disproportionately impact the poor.   It must be noted that the remainder of this post is a work of satire. This should be obvious to anyone who has read even one of our papers, but each of the proposals below has an analogous provision in Oklahoma licensing laws. To those supportive of government-created cartels, these proposals might sound almost reasonable.  A material threat to the public safety and welfare has for too long gone entirely unregulated, unrestrained and unchecked. This menace has the power to corrode not only mere industries, but to corrupt the entire state economy. It’s no overstatement to say that the practitioners of this perilous profession hold the power to destroy democracy as we know it. After a...
Read more