A July 10 court document filed in the Macon County Circuit Court marks the latest effort to shut down all illegal gambling efforts in Alabama.
VictoryLand in Macon County and Greenetrack in Greene County continue to push to operate electronic bingo gambling machines in their casinos, even though the Alabama Supreme Court has ruled electronic bingo illegal in Houston County.
The type of games currently operating at Greenetrack could not be confirmed at press time, but VictoryLand’s slot machine-type games have been shut down for more than two years. The bells, dings and multicolored lights coming from the casino floor came to a halt when the state attorney general’s office raided and seized more than 1,600 machines and more than $220,000 from VictoryLand on Feb. 19, 2013.
Lawsuits, appeals, extensions and even a change in judges have kept the court proceedings in flux since the raid led by Attorney General Luther Strange.
Strange wants the machines destroyed and the money turned over to the state, but VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor claims the electronic bingo machines that look, feel and act like slot machines are legal.
The latest round of news coming from the case started June 25 when Montgomery Circuit Judge William Shashy ruled the state should release the machines and cash. In his opinion, the 2013 seizure violated equal protection because other electronic bingo operations have remained in business at various points during the past two years.
Shashy accused Strange of “cherry picking” and ruled that VictoryLand had been treated unfairly. Strange immediately appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, which ruled in the Houston County Economic Development Authority case in 2013 that electronic bingo is illegal.
“I am surprised at (Judge Shashy’s June 25) court order because it fails to address the key question posed by both parties which is whether the VictoryLand gambling machines are illegal,” Strange said immediately following the ruling. “We’re reviewing the order to determine how best to settle the issue once and for all.”
In the meantime, attorneys for VictoryLand filed a motion July 7 asking Shashy to amend his ruling to include that the casino was operating legally. This type of amended order would shut down the appeal and require the state to return the machines and money to VictoryLand.
In response to the July 7 motion, the attorney general’s office filed a request July 10 that outlined reasons why the ruling on unfair treatment was “erroneous as a matter of fact and law and should be withdrawn.” It also asked the court to either deliver an amended order that “correctly condemns and forfeits all the seized items in this case” or deny the motion by VictoryLand’s attorneys and allow the case to proceed to the state Supreme Court. If neither of these work for the court, then the attorney general’s office asks that the amended order entered “be stayed until the pendency of the appeal that is currently docketed before the Supreme Court of Alabama.”
While several Alabama counties, including Macon County, have approved constitutional amendments to allow legal bingo, Strange said McGregor’s slot machine-style games are not legal. Legal bingo includes numbers being announced, players marking their cards and a player claiming a win, he explained.
The aspects to the game of bingo that make it legal in Alabama were detailed by the state Supreme Court in 2013. The ruling says in part: “[T]he game traditionally known as bingo is not one played by or within an electronic or computerized machine, terminal or server, but is one played outside of machines and electronic circuitry. … group activity … a person … responsible for calling out the randomly drawn designations and allowing time between each call for the players to check their cards and to physically mark them accordingly … actual physical cards.”
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