- Isleta Resort & Casino is currently closed due to COVID-19. COVID-19 UPDATES. Monthly Free Play Offers (offers based on carded play) Silver.
- It is concerning that employees such as Worker have no redress for work-related injuries suffered at Isleta Casino, and the Attorney General's office has seemingly overlooked this deficiency, leaving New Mexico residents who choose to work for Isleta Casino without a remedy. Isleta Casino, No. S-1-SC-37034, ¶ 32.
Workers Comp
January 22, 2020A worker who was injured at a tribal casino in New Mexico is not entitled to workers compensation benefits through the state, despite her employer's lack of a comp program.
In Mendoza v. Isleta Resort & Casino, the Supreme Court of New Mexico unanimously dismissed a lawsuit Thursday brought by an injured custodian after holding that the New Mexico Workers Compensation Administration did not have jurisdiction of her comp claim.
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Custodian Gloria Mendoza injured her knee while working at Isleta Resort & Casino, which is located on the Pueblo of Isleta. She filed a notice of injury and was told her claim was denied because she failed to report her injury within 24 hours.
She then filed a claim with the New Mexico Workers Compensation Administration, but because her injury occurred within the Pueblo's sovereign jurisdiction, the administration dismissed the claim for lack of jurisdiction. However, the administration held a conference on the matter, in which a mediator determined in a non-binding decision that tribal code did not mention workers compensation as a part of its jurisdiction. The director recommended that the worker's claim be considered compensable under the state's Workers Compensation Act and said that the Pueblo's third-party administrator was acting in bad faith. The casino and the TPA rejected the recommendation and filed a motion to dismiss, which was accepted.
Ms. Mendoza appealed to the New Mexico Court of Appeals, arguing that because the Pueblo had no workers compensation program in place the state program became the default. The appellate court reversed the decision and remanded it back to the administration for further proceedings.
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The parties petitioned the Supreme Court of New Mexico for review, and it reversed the appellate court ruling. The Supreme Court held that although there was no definitive language shifting jurisdiction of comp claims from the Pueblo of Isleta to the state's workers comp administration, there was also no evidence of intent by Pueblo to shift jurisdiction of those claims.
The court did not dispute the mediator's finding that the Pueblo does not appear to have an operating workers compensation program but found that this deficiency did not permit the administration to exercise jurisdiction over Ms. Mendoza's claim.
The supreme court held that the Pueblo's sovereign status left the justices with 'no means to make a tangible determination of prejudice' and dismissed the case with a warning that insurers should not presume 'that a tribe's involvement in a case will always necessitate dismissal.'
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It's an all-too-common headline: in June of 2018, an accountant employed by an Oklahoma City company entered a guilty plea in federal court to embezzling almost $400,000. The money had come from company credit cards and flowed into the coffers of tribal casinos. Before he headed off to serve 19 months in prison and begin restitution payments of more than $393,000, the man's lawyer accurately blamed 'his gambling addiction.'
But had he voluntarily excluded himself from those casinos under an Oklahoma program, that man might be free today, and his employers would not have been counting their losses.
Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, cites studies that show that half of the profits from commercial gambling come from addicted gamblers.
The voluntary self-exclusion program sponsored by the Oklahoma Association on Problem and Compulsive Gambling (OAPCG), and similar programs sponsored by a number of individual tribes, allows those with a gambling addiction to ban themselves from participating tribal gambling establishments for one, three, five, or 10 years. If they succumb to their urge to gamble they can be asked to leave for trespassing, and should they win at any of the casino games, the tribes have agreed not to pay those winnings.
However, one expert on the negative impact of commercial gambling says programs like the self-exclusion list are 'almost worthless,' given the pervasive extent of addictive gambling behavior of the kind that led the Oklahoma accountant to federal prison.
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'The definition of addiction is loss of free will,' said Les Bernal, national director of the organization Stop Predatory Gambling. 'Not many of them are going to voluntarily walk into a casino and put their names on a list.'
OAPCG officials take no position on gambling and continue to promote the self-exclusion effort.
'We have 17 tribes participating in the statewide self-exclusion program,' said OAPCG executive director Dr. Wiley Harwell. That means that as many as 14 tribes do not, although Harwell said all of the compacts governing tribal gambling require tribes to implement some form of self-exclusion program. The advantage of the statewide OAPCG program is that all participating casinos can quickly check a jackpot winner's name against the statewide database to see if they are listed.
Harwell said OAPCG currently has just over 2,000 names on its self-exclusion list, but he noted that 'at least several thousand' would be eligible for the program due to a gambling addiction. An OAPCG study recently showed that 3.2 percent of adult Oklahomans show signs of a gambling disorder, which is almost twice the national average.
'We have 132 casinos so there is one within at least fifty miles of everyone in Oklahoma,' Harwell said, suggesting that proximity and the wide proliferation of tribal gambling are worse here than in most states.
The organization, which is partly funded by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, also provides posters, literature, and even casino employee training material advertising the gambling addiction hotline and the benefits of the self-exclusion program.
Bernal said self-exclusion programs 'give the impression that people are doing something about gambling addiction. In reality, it is part of the con that commercial gambling represents.' He cites studies that show that half of the profits from commercial gambling come from addicted gamblers, which would indicate that the 2,000 people on the OAPCG list are just a tiny fraction of those with a serious gambling problem.
In addition, only about half of the tribes operating gambling enterprises even participate in the statewide list, Harwell said. While the tribes participating in the list include some of the largest casino operators, Harwell said those that do not and prefer to maintain their own single-site self-exclusion list simply don't have access to the broader and more effective statewide list.
The court did not dispute the mediator's finding that the Pueblo does not appear to have an operating workers compensation program but found that this deficiency did not permit the administration to exercise jurisdiction over Ms. Mendoza's claim.
The supreme court held that the Pueblo's sovereign status left the justices with 'no means to make a tangible determination of prejudice' and dismissed the case with a warning that insurers should not presume 'that a tribe's involvement in a case will always necessitate dismissal.'
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It's an all-too-common headline: in June of 2018, an accountant employed by an Oklahoma City company entered a guilty plea in federal court to embezzling almost $400,000. The money had come from company credit cards and flowed into the coffers of tribal casinos. Before he headed off to serve 19 months in prison and begin restitution payments of more than $393,000, the man's lawyer accurately blamed 'his gambling addiction.'
But had he voluntarily excluded himself from those casinos under an Oklahoma program, that man might be free today, and his employers would not have been counting their losses.
Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling, cites studies that show that half of the profits from commercial gambling come from addicted gamblers.
The voluntary self-exclusion program sponsored by the Oklahoma Association on Problem and Compulsive Gambling (OAPCG), and similar programs sponsored by a number of individual tribes, allows those with a gambling addiction to ban themselves from participating tribal gambling establishments for one, three, five, or 10 years. If they succumb to their urge to gamble they can be asked to leave for trespassing, and should they win at any of the casino games, the tribes have agreed not to pay those winnings.
However, one expert on the negative impact of commercial gambling says programs like the self-exclusion list are 'almost worthless,' given the pervasive extent of addictive gambling behavior of the kind that led the Oklahoma accountant to federal prison.
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'The definition of addiction is loss of free will,' said Les Bernal, national director of the organization Stop Predatory Gambling. 'Not many of them are going to voluntarily walk into a casino and put their names on a list.'
OAPCG officials take no position on gambling and continue to promote the self-exclusion effort.
'We have 17 tribes participating in the statewide self-exclusion program,' said OAPCG executive director Dr. Wiley Harwell. That means that as many as 14 tribes do not, although Harwell said all of the compacts governing tribal gambling require tribes to implement some form of self-exclusion program. The advantage of the statewide OAPCG program is that all participating casinos can quickly check a jackpot winner's name against the statewide database to see if they are listed.
Harwell said OAPCG currently has just over 2,000 names on its self-exclusion list, but he noted that 'at least several thousand' would be eligible for the program due to a gambling addiction. An OAPCG study recently showed that 3.2 percent of adult Oklahomans show signs of a gambling disorder, which is almost twice the national average.
'We have 132 casinos so there is one within at least fifty miles of everyone in Oklahoma,' Harwell said, suggesting that proximity and the wide proliferation of tribal gambling are worse here than in most states.
The organization, which is partly funded by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, also provides posters, literature, and even casino employee training material advertising the gambling addiction hotline and the benefits of the self-exclusion program.
Bernal said self-exclusion programs 'give the impression that people are doing something about gambling addiction. In reality, it is part of the con that commercial gambling represents.' He cites studies that show that half of the profits from commercial gambling come from addicted gamblers, which would indicate that the 2,000 people on the OAPCG list are just a tiny fraction of those with a serious gambling problem.
In addition, only about half of the tribes operating gambling enterprises even participate in the statewide list, Harwell said. While the tribes participating in the list include some of the largest casino operators, Harwell said those that do not and prefer to maintain their own single-site self-exclusion list simply don't have access to the broader and more effective statewide list.
Statewide participating tribes include Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Comanches, Seminoles, and Shawnees. The tribes that are listed as members of the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association but do not participate in the statewide OAPCG self-exclusion program are the Eastern Shawnees, Wichitas, Cheyenne-Arapahos, Fort Sill Apaches, Kickapoos, Sac and Foxes, Miamis, Pawnees, Osages, Peorias, Ottawas, Wyandottes, and Quapaws.
Harwell said there is no way to verify that all of those tribes maintain their own self-exclusion lists, although according to compact rules 'they are supposed to.'
A sampling of tribal gambling operations that are not participants in the OAPCG self-exclusion program shows that they take slightly different pathways to meet the compact requirement.
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Charlie Welbourne of the Cheyenne-Arapaho operation said their casinos offer a 'self-ban' of 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months, or a maximum of five years. If anyone on the site-maintained list appears at the casino, 'we politely ask them to leave,' he said.
Arthur Attocknie of the Pawnee tribe said his organization's casinos maintain their own self-ban list with potential bans of three or six months, one year, or a lifetime. He said the Pawnee tribe has considered adopting the OAPCG list.
'We have quite a few on our list,' he said, noting that his casino employees are trained to recognize the symptoms of addicted or compulsive gambling. He said the overall issue of gambling addiction meshes with the broader topic of other addictions, including drugs, and how society can address them.
Bernal said no matter who maintains the list, its primary flaw is that it 'puts the spotlight on the citizens, not on the commercial gambling enterprise that is the problem.'