Federal Judge Ends Long-Running Fight Against California Tribal Casino

A federal judge has dismissed a latest case and ordered sanctions against former residents of Jamul Indian Village who have fought for years against the tribe’s casino, without success.

Jamul Indian Village is a small autonomous tribal nation in San Diego County, California.
The tribe’s casino was completed in 2016 and is operated by the Jamul Indian Village.
The casino is located on land that was originally owned by the Roman Catholic Church of San Diego, which gave several local Kumeyaay families parcels of land they had owned since 1912.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs then recognized those families as a tribe and took the land in trust to create the Jamul Indian Village.

One group wanted to build a casino and a hotel on their tribal land, another group opposed it.
The former won the election, and the other set off a cascade of legal actions in tribal tribunals and in state and federal courts to first stop the construction of the casino.
In their complaint, originally filed in state court before being removed to the federal court in San Diego, the plaintiffs claimed that the Roman Catholic Bishop of San Diego fraudulently transferred the cemetery plot to the Village as part of a scheme to avoid liability for the desecration of their ancestors’ graves.

U.S. District Judge Andrew G. Schopler, a Joe Biden appointee, issued his order on Thursday, March 1, 2024.
He dismissed the latest case and ordered sanctions in the form of all attorney fees since the start of the case.
He wrote that “the defense argues that plaintiffs maintained this suit solely for harassment and with full knowledge that it was doomed. After surveying the legal carnage of the past few decades — including plaintiffs’ 20-plus failed lawsuits with various shifting and meritless theories — the court must grudgingly agree.”
He also added that “this campaign of harassment will not end until plaintiffs and their attorney are held to account for abusing the legal process.”