Playing Games - Video poker operators want to take their chance in court

Video poker operators in North Carolina are mad as fire, and we don't blame them. They paid good money to a lot of state legislators to keep their industry free of inconvenient regulation.

But look how the ingrates in Raleigh responded: They passed a law to put private video poker out of operation and restrict gambling to the new state lottery and a casino at the Cherokee reservation in the mountains.

You'd probably be mad, too, if your industry had given $700,000 in campaign contributions to influential legislators and other officials over the past five years to avoid being outlawed. You'd probably do the same thing the video poker industry did last week: It sued the state over the constitutionality of the ban and asked for an injunction to halt enforcement.

Never mind that law enforcement officials have been complaining about illegal video poker for years. State law allows video poker machines, but restricted jackpots to no more than $10 worth of coupons for replays or merchandise. Legal authorities say many operators ignored the law and offered high-dollar jackpots -- and raked in the loot when sheriffs weren't looking. They also say many video poker players were hooked on the games, which have been called the crack cocaine of electronic gambling.

But the legislature resisted cracking down on the industry. Democracy N.C. says Speaker Jim Black's political committees received about $200,000 in contributions from those associated with the industry from 2000-2004. Although the state Senate voted to ban video poker five times, the House refused to take up a ban until this year. After the 2005 assembly approved a state education lottery, Speaker Black supported a one-year phaseout of video poker machines. Retail outlets are restricted to three machines each; that must drop to two machines by Oct. 1, to one by next March and none by July.

Lawyers for the video game industry argue the phaseout is unconstitutional because it creates a state monopoly on gambling, amounts to taking private property without compensation and deprives the industry of its rights to due process. They also argue the ban exceeds governmental authority and should close down gaming at the casino on the Eastern Cherokee Reservation in Western North Carolina. That casino violates the same law that makes private video poker games illegal, they argue.

We've long opposed both video poker and a state lottery and would be happy if the courts struck down both. But lawyers for video poker interests have good arguments about the state's double standard on games of chance and its preference for a state monopoly on numbers. North Carolina was better off before video poker and state-sponsored numbers running arrived -- and when church bingo and farming were the biggest forms of gambling in these parts.