Opinion ID: 6986352
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bingo in the Abstract

Text: Before considering whether Mega-Mania satisfies the three criteria for a class II bingo game set forth in 25 U.S.C. § 2703(7)(A)(i)(I)-(III), we turn to the Government’s argument that these three factors are not the only criteria a game must meet to be an IGRA class II bingo game: The Government maintains that because IGRA uses the phrase “the game of chance commonly known as bingo” before spelling out the three criteria, other features that have traditionally characterized bingo games are also pertinent in determining whether or not a game is a class II bingo game. The Government contends, specifically, that (i) traditional bingo games lack the ante-up feature MegaMania possesses, (ii) in a traditional bingo game, unlike Cor-nerMania, earnings .depend on those of other players, and (iii) MegaMania’s “manic pace” and potentially high stakes are markedly different than the placid tranquility and token rewards and losses associated with a traditional bingo game, see Appellant’s Opening Brief (“AOB”) at 23 (citing Alice Andrews, Hooked on Bingo 11 (1988) (“There is a calm and peacefulness in playing Bingo. There is a get-away-from-it-all feeling, kind of like bamboo fishing.”)). The Government’s efforts to capture more completely the Platonic “essence” of traditional bingo are not helpful. Whatever a nostalgic inquiry into the vital characteristics of the game as it was played in our childhoods or home towns might discover, IGRA’s three explicit criteria, we hold, constitute the sole legal requirements for a game to count as class II bingo. There would have been no point to Congress’s putting the three very specific factors in the statute if there were also other, implicit criteria. The three included in the statute are in no way arcane if one knows anything about bingo, so why would Congress have included them if they were not meant to be exclusive? Further, IGRA includes within its definition of bingo “pull-tabs, ... punch boards, tip jars, [and] instant bingo ... [if played in the same location as the game commonly known as bingo],” 25 U.S.C. § 2703(7)(A)(i), none of which are similar to the traditional numbered ball, multi-player, card-based game we played as children. Cf. Merriamr-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 114 (10th ed.1999) (defining bingo as “a game of chance played with cards having numbered squares corresponding with numbered balls drawn at random and won by covering five such squares in a row”). Instant bingo, for example, is as the Fifth Circuit explained in Julius M. Israel Lodge of B’nai B’rith No. 2113 v. Commissioner, 98 F.3d 190 (5th Cir.1996), a completely different creature from the classic straight-line game. Instead, instant bingo is a self-contained instant-win game that does not depend at all on balls drawn or numbers called by an external source. See id. at 192-93. Moreover, § 2703(7)(A)(i)’s definition of class II bingo includes “other games similar to bingo,” 25 U.S.C. § 2703(7)(A)(i), explicitly precluding any reliance on the exact attributes of the children’s pastime. Finally, and critically, the NIGC’s interpretation of both IGRA and the NIGC’s primary IGRA implementing regulation, 25 C.F.R. § 502, rests on the proposition that neither Congress nor the Commission intended to “limit bingo to its classic form.” Action for Final Rule 25 C.F.R. § 502 (“§ 502 Action”), 57 Fed. Reg. 12382, 12382. A fuller version of the Commission’s interpretation is set out in the margin. 6 The NIGC’s conception of what counts as bingo under IGRA, as articulated in the agency’s Final Action on § 502 a few years after IGRA was enacted, is entitled to substantial deference, for “[administrative] practice has peculiar weight when it involves a contemporaneous construction of a statute by the men charged with the responsibility of setting its machinery in motion, of making the parts work as efficiently and smoothly while they are yet untried and new.” Norwegian Nitrogen Co. v. United States, 288 U.S. 294, 315, 53 S.Ct. 350, 77 L.Ed. 796 (1933) (Cardozo, J.). We briefly address one of the Government’s specific extra-textual arguments as to why MegaMania is not class II bingo. The Government contends that the “ante-up” feature of MegaMania “distinguishes [it] from the game commonly known as bingo, as historically played throughout this country and indeed even today in tribal bingo facilities,” AOB at 18-19, observing that in a traditional (presumably church-hall style) bingo game, players pay a fixed price for a “session pack” of cards, which lets them play for an evening. But the Government invokes nothing other than tradition to explain precisely why the ante-up pricing method is proscribed by IGRA. As the district court noted, “there is nothing in the statute or the regulations that requires a player to pay one price up front to play the entire game.” 103 Elec. Gambling Devices I, 1998 WL 827586, at . Given Congress’s and the NIGC’s apparent intentions not to supplement IGRA’s bingo specifications, we reject the Government’s challenge to the ante-up feature. All told, § 2703(7)(A)(i)’s definition of “the game of chance commonly known as bingo” is broader than the Government would have us read it. We decline the invitation to impose restrictions on its meaning besides those Congress explicitly set forth in the statute. Class II bingo under IGRA is not limited to the game we played as children.