Court Opinion

ID: 9724105
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:44:49.341636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:55.762980
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result, but I write specially to point out the inherent inequities in the way controlling law is framed, and to suggest alternatives which would remove those inequities and yet allow the state to properly punish wrongdoers.
The majority correctly sets out the law controlling our affirmance:
Minn.R. 7861.0050 (Supp. II 1992) provides:
Subpart 1. Prohibition. Illegal gambling may not be conducted at a premises for which a licensed organization has a premises permit to conduct lawful gambling.
Subp. 2. Discipline. The board shall suspend an organization’s premises permit for one year for any violation of this part. The board shall suspend or revoke an organization’s license if the organization or its agents participated in the illegal gambling prohibited by subpart 1.
When you have the fact situation we have here, the liquor establishment location, not the charity, is guilty of an infraction; it makes no sense for the bulk of the punishment to fall on the charity. Through warnings, suspension,' and fines on the liquor establishment, including possible civil and criminal action, the state has the power to control and penalize the liquor establishment separately. If the charity is found to have aided and abetted the liquor establishment, then so be it, the punishment can fall equally. That would be proper. But here, all parties stipulate that the charity was an innocent bystander. Thus, subpart 2, “Discipline,” is capricious when it requires the gambling control board to suspend the charity’s permit for a full year. The answer is simple. If the charity aided and abetted the liquor establishment in the infraction, use the law. But if the charity did not, the board should have the authority to suspend the charity’s permit for less than a year, or not at all, depending on the facts.
In other words, put common sense flexibility in the “discipline” portion.
All the arguments for and against charitable gambling were hashed and rehashed and argued before the present law setting up charitable gambling as a social good was passed. Thus, for better or for worse, charitable gambling is here.
*608Since that underpinning is firmly in place, it is rational and fair to give the board discipline discretion when the charity is found innocent, at least as to its part, of any intentional wrongdoing. The state’s message is better delivered by penalizing the specific wrongdoer, rather than a scatter gun approach, as here.