A federal appeals court has given the Comanche Nation a mixed but meaningful win in its fight over the Warm Springs Casino run by the Fort Sill Apache Tribe near Lawton, Oklahoma.
In a decision filed Tuesday (April 21), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit said part of the lawsuit can keep moving even after arguments that tribal sovereign immunity should block the case. Judges said the Comanche Nation may continue claims under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, known as IGRA, against Fort Sill Apache officials sued in their official roles.
The dispute began after Warm Springs Casino opened in 2022. According to the ruling, the Comanche Nation runs nearby gaming properties and claimed that “The resulting competition made the Nation’s casinos less profitable.”
The Nation asked the court to stop casino operations and award damages. The opinion says the Nation alleged the casino “was opened in violation of federal law.”
Writing for the three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich said the court would “affirm in part and reverse in part.”
Why the Warm Springs Casino ruling supporting the Comanche Nation matters
The panel said “the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) abrogates the Tribe’s sovereign immunity defense, so the Nation can proceed with its official-capacity claims under IGRA.”
It keeps alive the central argument that Warm Springs Casino may be operating outside the Fort Sill Apache Tribe’s gaming compact with Oklahoma. The Comanche Nation contends the casino sits on land that does not qualify as Fort Sill Apache land under that compact.
Judges said the complaint alleges the Tsalote Allotment remains Kiowa land, not Fort Sill Apache land. At this stage, the court said it had to accept properly pleaded allegations as true.
The ruling also said the claim fits a federal provision allowing suits “initiated by a State or Indian tribe to enjoin a class III gaming activity located on Indian lands and conducted in violation of any Tribal-State compact.”
But the Comanche Nation did not win across the board. The judges rejected official-capacity racketeering claims under RICO that sought injunctions and declarations. The panel said the Ex Parte Young exception could not be used here because the complaint did not tie the named officials to ongoing casino operations.
As the panel put it, “Ex Parte Young does not help the Nation because its claims are not against officials charged with operating the casino.”
The court separately allowed individual-capacity RICO damages claims to continue, saying those claims target officials personally rather than the tribe itself. Because of that, judges wrote, “they cannot raise the Tribe’s sovereign immunity.”
The panel did not decide whether those officials might later assert qualified immunity.
The case now returns to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The decision lands amid wider tribal gaming battles, including a temporary casino deal involving Yocha Dehe, Vallejo, and Scotts Valley in California, and a paused northern California tribal casino lawsuit.
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