LONGVIEW — The Cowlitz Tribe’s decades-long battle for a reservation may not be over.
Opponents to the Cowlitz Tribe’s Ilani Casino Resort have appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging the tribe’s right to have a reservation on 156 acres of property near La Center.
The Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde and Clark County have dropped out of the case, following the City of Vancouver’s withdrawal earlier this year. That leaves Citizens Against Reservation Shopping, the La Center cardroom owners and three private landowners in the suit.
“We have believed in the principle of our issue from the very beginning. I haven’t sensed any waiver at all,” said John Bockmier, spokesman for the La Center cardrooms.
Construction of the Cowlitz Tribe’s casino is about 70 percent complete, according to the tribe. The casino resort is expected to generate 1,000 new jobs when it opens next spring near Exit 16.
Although Cowlitz Tribe is a relevant party in the case, the suit is actually against the U.S. Department of Interior, which took the land into trust on behalf of the tribe last year. In July, an appeals court sided with a lower court’s 2014 ruling in favor of the federal government.
“Both the U.S. District Court and Court of Appeals rulings have been strongly in favor of the Cowlitz Tribe, and we are very comfortable with the validity of the Appeals Court’s decision. The La Center cardrooms’ continued obstruction of this project is counterproductive to the local economy,” Bill Iyall, Cowlitz Tribal chairman, said in a prepared statement.
The 452-page appeal details why the opponents think the lower courts erred. Opponents have argued that the department violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar decision, in which the high court said the government can put land into trust only for tribes that were under federal jurisdiction in 1934. The Cowlitz weren’t officially recognized by the U.S. government until 2002.
“The Carcieri case was a very important Supreme Court case, and we believe the appeals court judge made a mistake when she went in opposition of that ruling,” said Susan Gilbert, who is one of the property owners pursuing the appeal.
Gilbert and her husband, Greg, are concerned about how water runoff from the casino would affect their rural Ridgefield property, which is located across the freeway.
“We as layman find it difficult to believe they can contain runoff from their property satisfactorily enough to not destroy the stream (which feeds into the Lewis River),” Gilbert said Monday.
The La Center cardrooms are worried the new casino will drive them out of business.
“We’re obviously not opposed to gaming or Native Americans. The location doesn’t work. Not just for our business, but a for a lot of private businesses and landowners. That’s why the opposition has always gone for so long,” Bockmier said.
Dave Barnett, Cowlitz Tribe member and key developer in the casino project, said that the cardrooms had offered to drop the lawsuit if the tribe agreed to buy them out. The tribe declined, he said. Bockmier couldn’t confirm this report Monday.
