- The court denied Picayune’s injunction and stay motion and threw out, on sovereign immunity grounds, the claim it brought against North Fork under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
- The court called Picayune’s 30% to 50% revenue-loss estimate unexplained and its 2019 study, which projected a 40% loss, years out of date.
- The court counted Picayune’s delay against it, noting the injunction motion came Aug. 28, nearly five months after California’s Supreme Court declined review.
- A claim against the National Indian Gaming Commission over the management contract it approved in 2024 was not dismissed.
FRESNO, Calif. – Gaming at the North Fork Mono casino in Madera County will continue under an Oct. 29 order in which U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff held that sovereign immunity bars the gaming claim brought by the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, and that the tribe’s showing of irreparable harm fell short. One claim stands: a challenge to the 2024 decision by the chair of the National Indian Gaming Commission to approve the casino’s management contract.
Immunity Ends The Gaming Claim Against North Fork
Picayune sued under the section of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act that lets a tribe seek to enjoin class III gaming conducted in violation of a tribal-state compact, the order says. No compact is in effect for the Madera parcel, and no party contested that. The North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians instead operates under secretarial procedures the Interior Secretary issued in 2016, after California voters rejected the compact’s ratification in 2014 and the state declined to negotiate another.
Picayune argued that the procedures allow gaming only where it is lawful under the federal act, and that it is not, because the California Court of Appeal ruled in December 2025 that the governor’s 2012 concurrence had never been valid. The state Supreme Court declined on April 1 to take the case.
Sherriff found that a Ninth Circuit decision issued Sept. 16, Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi, gives Picayune a cause of action to sue over secretarial procedures. He then held that the act does not unmistakably abrogate North Fork’s immunity from that suit.
The order reads the waiver narrowly, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community as limiting it to gaming that violates a compact, and it notes that the act separately lets the Secretary enforce secretarial procedures against a tribe.
The court dismissed the claim without leave to amend, saying no amendment could cure an immunity bar. Immunity also ended Picayune’s claim under the Administrative Procedure Act as far as North Fork is concerned. The same claim fails against Station Casinos, Red Rock Resorts and SC Madera Management, the three companies named as nominal defendants, because nothing obliged the NIGC chair to revisit the governor’s concurrence when the management contract came up for approval. The court allowed no amendment on either ruling.
The Court Found The 30% To 50% Loss Unexplained
Declarations from tribe members put the expected hit to Picayune’s gaming revenue at 30% to 50% without saying how that figure was reached, the order says. A 2019 study by an outside firm, which Picayune attached to its reply brief, had put the loss near 40%. The court called the study years out of date and said a one-page statement calling it still representative had virtually no analysis behind it.
The order acknowledges that neither of Picayune’s claims can produce a damages award, which would otherwise make lost revenue reparable. It still found the harm unproven. Even if the study were right that revenue would fall at some point, the court said, it does not show a loss in the immediate term or one that only an injunction could remedy.
The casino stands about 39 miles from Picayune’s Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino, according to the complaint the order summarizes. Some patrons may shift to North Fork, the court said, while a second casino nearby might also bring in customers neither tribe had before. It called Picayune’s claim of harm speculation that fell short of its burden.
Delay Counts Heavily Against Picayune
The same claims were available to Picayune once the Court of Appeal ruled in December 2025, the order says, and no later than the state Supreme Court’s April 1 denial of review. Picayune filed June 5 and moved for the injunction and stay Aug. 28, shortly before North Fork’s planned opening and after North Fork had taken on substantial financial and legal obligations.
The order cites precedent that even a two-month delay can weigh against a finding of irreparable harm. Picayune’s motion came nearly five months after the April 1 denial. At the Oct. 9 hearing, Picayune’s counsel argued that an earlier suit might have failed for lack of an imminent injury, and the court said Picayune had standing no later than April 2026.
Hardships Tip Toward North Fork
A declaration from a North Fork tribal member, which the order summarizes, said the tribe owed more than $600 million as of Aug. 31, with interest at a blended 10.5% adding about $173,000 a day. The declaration also said the casino’s hiring count had passed 1,222 and that an injunction would bankrupt the tribe. The court weighed that against what it called an unquantified potential benefit to Picayune and found the hardships tilted strongly toward North Fork.
The order cites a filing that gave Oct. 28 as the casino’s scheduled opening date. Red Rock Resorts said the North Fork casino opened early at 3 p.m. Oct. 27, a day before that date. With the injunction denied, the casino can keep operating as a new tribal property in California gambling while the federal claim proceeds.
The Management-Contract Claim Remains
The NIGC and its chair did not move to dismiss and filed an answer denying that their actions violated the law, the order says. Picayune’s claim against them seeks to vacate the sign-off the chair gave the management deal in January 2024, the core of the North Fork casino lawsuit it amended Aug. 20.
In denying the stay of that approval, the court found Picayune unlikely to succeed on the claim. Neither the federal act nor the commission’s rules make a governor’s concurrence something the chair must re-examine at the contract stage, the order says, and the 2016 secretarial procedures imply the Secretary had found the gaming lawful.
The order adds that the January 2024 approval came nearly two years before the Court of Appeal declared the concurrence void, and that letting a state retroactively annul a governor’s concurrence for federal purposes would undermine the federal exception for newly acquired land.
The court found Picayune has standing to press the claim and left open whether the claim can go forward with only the federal defendants left in the case. The federal defendants reserved the right to argue that the United States is generally the only required defendant in suits challenging federal agency action. The order sets no date for further proceedings on the claim.
Picayune’s attorney, Navtej Dhillon, described the district court as “just a pit stop” and said the tribe will appeal to the Ninth Circuit, GGB Magazine reported.