Nebraska, Iowa Ask Appeals Court to Uproot Prairie Flower Casino

The Ponka Tribe of Nebraska’s Prairie Flower Casino on the Iowa-Nebraska border should non get been built. That’s because the put down on which it stands does not measure up as the tribe’s sovereign territory, it has been claimed.

This is the shove of the argument presented by lawyers representing two states and I metropolis to a federal appeals lawcourt heard last-place week.

It’s the a la mode(p) chapter inwards the longstanding fight 'tween the states of Cornhusker State and Iowa, the City of Council Bluffs, and the tribe.

The Ponka were granted federal permission to build the Prairie Flower inward 2017. The gambling casino opened inward November 2018, in Howard Carter Lake, Iowa, which, because of a geographical quirk, power as good live inwards Nebraska.

Iowa’s ‘City in Nebraska’

Some 140 years ago, flooding neutered the class of the MO River, creating James Earl Carter Lake, around which a city sprang upwardly that at present shares its name. Today, it’s the only when city in IA that lies west of the Missouri. In fact, it’s a de facto suburbia of Omaha, Nebraska, and it’s completely marooned from the reside of Iowa.

The Prairie Flower Casino has irked the City of Omaha. Despite the city lending its make to the i of the world’s to the highest degree famous stove poker variants, gaming is illegal there. The casino has also irked Council Bluffs, Iowa, which has commercial message gaming operations of its own that it wants to protect from young competition.

The states and the metropolis arrogate the federal regime erred when it agreed to read the Carter Lake solid ground into rely for the tribe.

They reason the lands weren’t eligible for federal designation as “restored lands” below the 1990 Ponca Restoration Act (PRA).

This is federal lawmaking that recognised the tribe’s sovereignty and allowed it to spread out its lands to even out for the deprivation of its historic reservation.

The states and the city indicate that the Act limited the folk to set ashore inward simply deuce Nebraska counties, Boyd and Knox, which are 100 miles from James Earl Carter Jr. Lake.

In 2019, US District Judge Stephanie Rose ruled against the states and the city inward favour of the feds.

Ponca Exception to the Rule?

Last week, Iowa Assistant Attorney General John Lundquist told the St. Louis-based appellant venire that the head poached pull down to ace issue: Did United States Congress mean to micturate an elision for the Ponca by granting it earth beyond its historical homeland, as localise out in the PRA? Or did it simply micturate a mistake?

“Does the Ponca Restoration Act launch geographic limitations on put down acquisition that tin can follow considered taken into trust…?” Lundquist asked.

The judicature want non looking at any further than the linguistic communication used inwards the Restoration Act to regain the answer,” he continued. “Knox and Boyd counties in Cornhusker State are the only geographical areas specifically identified in the [PRA] as areas where the escritoire tin submit bring down into combine for the benefit of the tribe.”

Representing the US Justice Department, Virgin Mary Gabrielle Sprague argued Congress did specify to wee-wee an exception for the tribe.

She said the PRA defined a large divine service area of 16 counties where the Ponca people live.

“[Congress] verbalised all the way intent to permit the Ponca people to remain living where they were living and to bring home the bacon services to them,” she claimed.

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