An American Indian tribe in Connecticut is asking a federal court to revive its lawsuit against Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, alleging that he illegally bowed to political pressure before blocking them from opening a new casino last year.
Interior last year refused to sign off on a proposal from the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to open a third casino in Connecticut, after an intense lobbying campaign from MGM Resorts International and two Nevada Republican lawmakers. Las Vegas-based MGM recently opened a new casino in Massachusetts that would have faced competition from the tribes’ joint venture 12 miles away in East Windsor, Conn.
The Mashantucket, joined by the state of Connecticut, say in the new filing that Interior’s decision not to approve its application “was the product of improper political influence and was therefore ‘arbitrary and capricious’” and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. They cited a 1971 D.C. Circuit decision that invalidated approval of the Three Sisters Bridge in Washington, D.C, because of political pressure leading to the decision.
Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last month agreed with Interior that the tribe’s initial lawsuit should be dismissed because of technical differences between how the Mashantucket and Mohegan tribes initially won approval to operate casinos decades ago.
Interior’s decision last September appeared to have changed at the eleventh hour after career officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs had spent weeks preparing to approve the arrangement, as POLITICO previously reported based on internal emails. The tribe says in its new filing that they were in frequent contact with Interior officials in the weeks before the decision and were caught off guard by the result. The decision is under investigation by Interior’s Office of Inspector General, which is in the midst of an apparent shakeup...
MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment