Judges say Kline lacked authority
Closing of KCK casino rejected
By RICK ALM
The Kansas City Star
Federal appellate court judges ruled Friday that Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline had no authority to raid and close a tribal casino in downtown Kansas City, Kan., two years ago.

“There was no legal basis for the state’s action and very little likelihood that the state will ever have a legal justification for enforcing its gaming laws” on the small tract of land across the street from City Hall, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

The immediate effect of the ruling was unclear. Conly J. Schulte, the Omaha, Neb., attorney who argued the case for the Oklahoma-based Wyandotte Nation, could not be reached for comment.

The tribe also owns on the site a long-closed Masonic temple, which it had once begun to remodel as a permanent casino structure.

The ruling would appear to allow the tribe to resume that work and even conduct gambling there — at least temporarily.

Kline was unavailable for comment late Friday. Spokesman Jan Lunsford said: “We’re still reviewing the ruling and will have more to say Monday after we have time to evaluate our options.”

The court’s 22-page order characterized the case as a “complex … random maze,” an “epic tale of claims and counter-claims … and lots and lots of lawsuits” that stem from events back to 1973.

The ruling Friday dissolved an injunction the court said was improperly issued by federal District Judge Julie Robinson that temporarily barred the tribe from conducting gambling activities on the site.

The appellate court, however, let stand another Robinson injunction barring state enforcement of its gambling laws against the tribe.

The tribe last December dismantled and hauled away the vacant and vandalized mobile building units it had fashioned into the 7th Street Casino.

In August 2003, the tribe defied government officials and opened the casino in the mobile units parked on a sliver of land between the Masonic temple and the tribe’s historic Huron Cemetery across the street from City Hall.

City and state officials have challenged in court the tribal-owned land’s de facto reservation status since it was granted by the federal government in the mid-1990s. The tribe has filed several countersuits.

When the National Indian Gaming Commission in April 2004 appeared poised to overturn the land’s reservation status, Kline raided the casino and shut it down.

The state seized 152 slot machines and about $500,000 in cash. The casino never reopened.

The tribe sued Kline and other state and local officials, claiming the raid was a breach of its tribal sovereignty.

The Denver-court said Kline overstepped his authority by raiding the building on what appears to be sovereign American Indian land. Kline was “determined to shut down the tribe’s gaming facility, and unwilling to wait for the case to travel through proper legal channels,” the court said.

The ultimate outcome of the case remains in doubt. The court remanded the case to Robinson for trial on key issues of fact, principally whether the tribe’s 1996 purchase of the land and temple was qualified for tribal gambling under federal rules in the first place.

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First glance

■ A federal appellate court’s ruling appears to temporarily allow the Wyandotte Nation to resume work and gambling at a Kansas City, Kan., location that had been shut down in 2004.

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