The UNLV Gaming Law Journal (GLJ) is published by the students of the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in conjunction with the International Masters of Gaming Law.
GLJ is the only specialty journal in the United States dedicated to the rapidly growing field of gaming. It is a journal of legal scholarship dedicated to analyzing the law and policy implications of gaming case law, legislation, administrative regulations, and the wider world that gaming touches. This includes social policy, artificial intelligence, addiction, tribal law, and climate change, among others. The GLJ is comprised of second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students who are interested in gaming law.
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Volume 16, Issue 1 (2025)View issue
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- Front Matter1 September 2025
- Article1 September 2025
- Article1 September 2025
Making Sense of the State's Duty to Negotiate in Good Faith Under IGRA: The "Permits Such Gaming" Requirement and Legitimate State Interests in Gaming Compact Negotiations
Under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), a tribe may conduct Class III or casino-style gaming only in a state that “permits such gaming” and in accordance with an approved compact between the tribe and the state. But the appropriate interpretation of IGRA’s “permits such gaming” requirement and how it relates to the state’s duty to negotiate gaming compacts in good faith remain murky more than 35 years after IGRA was enacted, hindering both compact negotiations between individual states and tribes and the entire tribal gaming industry. In this Article, we clarify and develop legal standards to apply to two key concepts in IGRA: the “permits such gaming” requirement and the state’s good-faith duty. First, we posit that IGRA’s “permits such gaming” provision is best understood as a threshold issue to determine only whether the state must negotiate at all over Class III gaming. Second, we identify and categorize three substantive areas in which a state may fall short of its good-faith duty. Specifically, we identify and develop “legitimate state interests” as such a category. Requiring states to ground negotiation stances in legitimate state interests and public policy as an aspect of good-faith negotiation is consistent with IGRA’s provisions and Congress’s intent. State positions on particular Class III games appropriately are assessed in the context of the state’s good-faith duty in compact negotiations and fit comfortably within this category. Together, our proposed interpretations of IGRA’s “permits such gaming” requirement and the state’s good-faith duty form a clear procedural and substantive framework that “makes sense,” both for facilitating compact negotiations and for judicial or the Interior Department’s determinations of whether the state has fulfilled its good-faith duty. - Note1 September 2025
- Note1 September 2025
- Note1 September 2025