Combine 31 pro-gambling Greene and Macon County leaders with three well-known Alabama civil rights attorneys — Edward Still, James U. Blacksher and Fred D. Gray — and what do you get? A lawsuit accusing Gov. Bob Riley and Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson of voting rights violations and intimidation tactics likened to those used by the Ku Klux Klan.
Since Riley and his Task Force on Illegal Gambling, led by Tyson, began raiding facilities operating slot machines being called electronic bingo, several Greene and Macon County legislators have accused them of civil rights violations. While the legislators claim the task force has targeted facilities in predominantly black areas, Riley maintains that it has applied the same pressure to other casinos around the state including those in Houston, Jefferson, Lowndes, Madison and Mobile counties.
On July 29, Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro; Rep. A.J. McCampbell, D-Linden; several Greene and Macon County commissioners; and other concerned citizens filed a lawsuit in federal court against Riley and Tyson — as individuals and in their official capacities — claiming violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Ku Klux Klan Act of 1985.
In the complaint, Riley and Tyson are accused of implementing “policies and practices that effectively nullify the votes of the electoral majorities in Greene and Macon counties who approved local amendments to the Alabama Constitution establishing lawful regimes in their respective counties for electronic bingo operations.”
Riley and Tyson also are accused of sending “large numbers of state troopers on the highways and premises of the residents of Greene and Macon counties for the purpose of threatening and intimidating,” which the plaintiffs say violates the Klan Act. The act “makes it unlawful for ‘two or more persons in any state or territory (to) conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws.’”
Riley’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss the case Aug. 27, calling the lawsuit “frivolous.”
“It (the case) has nothing to do with voting rights and everything to do with moneyed interests’ attempts to flout Alabama’s laws prohibiting gambling,” the response stated. “They (the plaintiffs) are bringing it (the case) as a last-ditch effort to block the state from enforcing its gambling laws.”
Since the task force has applied its law enforcement powers against other casinos across the state, the governor’s team said, “Plaintiffs are insulting the letter and the spirit of (the) nation’s most important civil rights laws by invoking them to shield illegal gambling. Plaintiffs are not really alleging, and cannot possibly allege, that the governor and commander (of the task force) have violated their right to vote.”
Tyson told The Alabama Baptist the plaintiffs should “be ashamed of themselves.”
“I think it is an absolute shame that they would confuse the high ideals embodied in those statutes with slot machine bingo games,” he said.
Still the plaintiffs believe Riley and the task force “have caused, and are continuing to cause, grievous and irreparable harm to the citizens of those counties” by “shutting down the bingo operations in Greene and Macon counties.”
But Birmingham attorney Eric Johnston said, “Nobody’s rights have been disenfranchised.
“Every bit of this is to try to call attention away from the illegal gambling going on,” he said. “The main thing is they are trying to delay [the case] long enough to get to the inauguration in January because then the task force will end because (Ron) Sparks supports legalized gambling and (Robert) Bentley said he would dissolve the task force if he became governor.”
Johnston believes the plaintiffs have built a “fragile legal structure in an effort to delay justice in Alabama.”
“Every single one of them (the plaintiffs) has an interest in seeing gambling continue,” he added.
“The commissioners want the employment from gambling, claiming that people need jobs and they need money for the community. But they are part of the political machine that wants to perpetuate gambling even though it’s slot machine gambling that violates our criminal law. … I think they know that this lawsuit is so fragile and so tenuous that once there is an opportunity to address it on the merits, it will get thrown out.”
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