Supreme Court’s 6-point ‘bingo’ test changed everything

By Sondra Washington

The closest Alabama Supreme Court justices have come to determining the legality of the slot machine-style gambling devices housed in several casinos across the state is issuing a six-point description of legal bingo. The explanation was delivered in a November 2009 ruling addressing gambling operations at Lowndes County’s sole casino in White Hall. The justices said the “game commonly or traditionally known as bingo” must include these characteristics:

1. Each player uses one or more cards with spaces arranged in five columns and five rows, with an alphanumeric or similar designation assigned to each space.
2. Alphanumeric or similar designations are randomly drawn and announced one by one.
3. In order to play, each player must pay attention to the values announced; if one of the values matches a value on one or more of the player’s cards, then he or she must physically act by marking his or her card accordingly.
4. A player can fail to pay proper attention or properly mark his or her card and thereby miss an opportunity to be declared a winner.
5. A player must recognize that his or her card has a “bingo,” i.e., a predetermined pattern of matching values, and, in turn, announce to the other players and the announcer that this is the case before any other player does so.
6. The game of bingo contemplates a group activity in which multiple players compete against each other to be the first to properly mark a card with the predetermined winning pattern and announce that fact.

Shortly after this ruling was issued, many gambling machine owners and officials planning to bring slot machine-style gambling to their areas announced they had new machines that met the Supreme Court’s requirements. But none ever brought the machines in for an official determination by any companies other than those hand-picked and paid by the casino owners.

On Dec. 3, 2009, Fairfield leaders displayed machines in City Hall and said they complied with the high court’s test. The mayor and council members already supported the city’s gambling operations. But Bessemer Mayor Ed May, who has continuously fought his council’s gambling expansion plans, told The Alabama Baptist that nobody on Fairfield’s City Council was qualified to determine if the machines were legal.

Soon casino owners in Houston, Lowndes and Macon counties also said their machines satisfied the Supreme Court’s requirements. Yet none of them allowed Gov. Bob Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling to inspect the machines to prove their validity. In the end, the facilities either closed voluntarily or experienced task force raids.

Todd Stacy, Riley’s press secretary, said the court’s ruling is clear.

“The Supreme Court didn’t lay down six guidelines for converting a slot machine to a bingo machine,” he said. “They said, ‘This is what constitutes bingo and if it doesn’t meet these guidelines, it’s not bingo.’ … The fact that casino bosses are trying to take this test and use the Supreme Court’s rules to justify illegal machines is ridiculous.”