Opinion ID: 6986352
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Johnson Act

Text: The Government maintains that the Me-gaMania terminal, although specifically authorized under IGRA, is nonetheless an illegal “gambling device” under the Johnson Act. The Johnson Act’s definition of “gambling device” includes slot machines (statutorily defined in painstaking detail, see 15 U.S.C. § 1171(a)(1)), and also any other “machine or mechanical device” designed “primarily” for gambling that, when operated, either delivers money or property or entitles a player to receive the same “as the result of the application of an element of chance,” id. § 1171(a)(1) & (2). The definition also includes “essential part[s] intended to be used in connection with any such machine ..., but which is not attached.” Id. § 1171(a)(3). In most circumstances, the Johnson Act prohibits the possession or operation of any gambling device on federal land and in Indian country. See 15 U.S.C. § 1175. As mentioned, IGRA explicitly repealed the application of the Johnson Act to class III gaming devices used pursuant to tribal-state compacts, see 25 U.S.C. § 2710(d)(6), but did not explicitly address the relationship between IGRA and the Johnson Act as applied to class II gaming. We are not aware of any authority predating IGRA that addresses how the Johnson Act applied to bingo aids. In any event, there is little point at this juncture in engaging in time travel to determine how the Johnson Act would have applied to bingo in Indian country in the absence of IGRA. 12 What matters now is how the two are to be read together — that is, how two enactments by Congress over thirty-five years apart most comfortably coexist, giving each enacting Congress’s legislation the greatest continuing effect. The text of IGRA quite explicitly indicates that Congress did not intend to allow the Johnson Act to reach bingo aids. The statute provides that bingo using “electronic, computer, or other technologic aids” is class II gaming, and therefore permitted in Indian country. 25 U.S.C. § 2703(7)(A)(i). Reading the Johnson Act to forbid such aids would render the quoted language a nullity. Why would Congress carefully protect such technologic aids through the text of § 2703(7)(A)(i), yet leave them to the wolves of a Johnson Act forfeiture action? We cannot presume that in enacting IGRA, Congress performed such “a useless act”. 2B Norman J. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 49.11, at 83 (5th ed.1992). By deeming aids to bingo class II gaming in the text of IGRA, see 25 U.S.C. § 2703(7)(A)(i), Congress specifically authorized the use of such aids as long as the class II provisions of IGRA are complied with. See 25 U.S.C. § 2710(a)-(c). In short, while complete, self-contained electronic or mechanical facsimiles of a game of chance, including bingo, may indeed be forbidden by the Johnson Act after the enactment of IGRA cf. 25 C.F.R. § 502.8 (defining “electronic facsimile” under IGRA as “any gambling device as defined in 15 U.S.C. § 1171(a)(2) or (3) [i.e., the Johnson Act]”); Cabazon Band, 827 F.Supp. at 31 (“[I]t is plainly evident that IGRA’s ‘facsimiles’ are the Johnson Act’s ‘gambling devices.’ ”), we hold that mere technologic aids to bingo, such as the MegaMania terminal, are not. 13 By so holding, we maintain fidelity to two entrenched canons of statutory construction: (i) courts should give effect to both of two statutes covering related or overlapping subjects, see Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, Local 770, 398 U.S. 235, 249-50, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970) (“accommodating” the blanket prohibition on federal court strike injunctions in labor disputes contained in § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 104, to the collective bargaining enforcement provision of the later-enacted § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 185(a)), and (ii) a specific statute governs a general one. As the Supreme Court explained in reconciling the longstanding statutory employment preference for Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, see 25 U.S.C. § 461 et seq., with the anti-discrimination provisions of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, Pub.L. No. 92-261, 86 Stat. 103: ... [T]he Indian preference statute is a specific provision applying to a very specific situation. The 1972 Act, on the other hand, is of general application. Where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment. The courts are not at liberty to pick and choose among congressional enactments, and when two statutes are capable of co-existence, it is the duty of the courts, absent a clearly expressed congressional intention to the contrary, to regard each as effective. “When there are two acts upon the same subject, the rule is to give effect to both if possible....” Morton v. C.R. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535, 550-51, 94 S.Ct. 2474, 41 L.Ed.2d 290 (1974) (quoting United States v. Borden Co., 308 U.S. 188, 198, 60 S.Ct. 182, 84 L.Ed. 181 (1939)); see also Morales v. Trans World Airlines, 504 U.S. 374, 384, 112 S.Ct. 2031, 119 L.Ed.2d 157 (1992) (“[I]t is a commonplace of statutory construction that the specific governs the general.”); Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U.S. 437, 445, 107 S.Ct. 2494, 96 L.Ed.2d 385 (1987), superseded on other grounds by the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Pub.L. No. 102-166, 105 Stat. 1071. Congress’s most recent relevant word on gaming is that aids to bingo are legal in Indian country. Section 2703 of IGRA is a “specific provision applying to a very specific situation,” Morton, 417 U.S. at 550, 94 S.Ct. 2474, and we must accordingly give it effect here. Finally, our decision carries out Congress’s goal — expressed in the text of IGRA — of providing “a statutory basis for the operation of gaming by Indian tribes as a means of promoting tribal economic development, self-sufficiency, and strong tribal governments.” 25 U.S.C. § 2702(1); see also Senate Report at 9 (describing Senate’s aim of fostering tribes’ use of modern technology in branching their class II gaming operations, thereby “enhancing] the[ir] potential of increasing revenues”). MegaMania is class II bingo. Because the MegaMania terminal is a class II aid to bingo, we conclude that it is not an illicit gambling device under the Johnson Act.