Court Opinion

ID: 9731265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:40:38.109181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:16.650801
License: Public Domain

Corrigan, J.
(dissenting). I would reverse the circuit court’s decision. The board’s decision was authorized by Michigan law, Const 1963, art 6, § 28. The State Board of Education appropriately denied petitioner’s application for a license to teach courses in casino dealing for craps, blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and pai gow poker and to teach the skills necessary for students to become croupiers and blackjack dealers.1 In denying petitioner’s application for a license, the board relied on the superintendent’s memorandum that gaming is criminal behavior in Michigan, citing OAG, 1977-1978, No 5368, p 605 (September 7, 1978). It is true that the Attorney General’s seventeen-year-old opinion does not áccount for some of the more recent legislative developments exempting certain activity from the public policy against gambling. However, petitioner’s school would teach behavior that Michigan law currently defines as criminal, MCL 750.301-750.315; MSA 28.533-28.547. With limited exceptions, the purpose of the current scheme of criminal laws remains to suppress gambling as an activity injurious to public morals and welfare, State ex rel Comm ’r of State Police v *521Nine Money Fall Games, 130 Mich App 414, 419; 343 NW2d 576 (1983).
Public opinion is obviously in flux on this question. It is not for an administrative agency or the judicial branch to weigh and resolve the competing political interests. The Michigan' Legislature’s enactments, as they bear upon a matter of public policy, are conclusive. Boardwalk Regency Corp v Travelers Express Co, Inc, 745 F Supp 1266 (ED Mich, 1990) (opinion of Gilmore, J.). We are sworn to uphold the Legislature’s judgments that are ensconced in our state’s laws, unless our state or federal constitution forbids it.
Current Michigan law squarely prohibits the very conduct that petitioner’s school would teach. Casino gambling is illegal in the State of Michigan.
In Int’l Recovery Systems, Inc v Gabler (On Rehearing), 210 Mich App 422, 423-424; 527 NW2d 22 (1995), in authorizing enforcement of a foreign gambling debt, this Court stated:
It is clear that gambling is contrary to public policy in Michigan, aside from those narrowly circumscribed exceptions created by the Legislature. ...
In the case before us, further briefing has convinced us that we must treat as irrelevant our state’s public policy and our courts’ long-standing refusal to enforce gambling debts. We are dealing with a fait accompli, a foreign judgment.
To reach its result, the majority focuses on the narrowly circumscribed and precise exceptions created by the Legislature, and overlooks the public policy against casino gambling. Although millionaire parties are lawful in a highly regulated form in Michigan, MCL 432.101 et seq.; MSA 18.969(101) et seq., the regulations limit operators *522at millionaire parties to wages not exceeding $10 per event. 1984 AACS, R 432.212(3). Petitioner is not seeking to train operators for millionaire parties. Nor does it seek to teach people to sell lottery tickets or to work at race tracks.
Michigan is not a sovereign nation. It did not choose to allow casino gambling on Indian reservations, but was required to negotiate compacts with the various tribes by virtue of federal law, 25 USC 2701 et seq. The State of Michigan had no say in the federal government’s decision. Nor did it (or should it) have a voice in the decision to authorize casino gambling in Windsor, Ontario.
The Legislature is the final arbiter of this state’s public policy. The quintessential political judgment whether to alter the quality of our collective life in Michigan by legalizing casino gambling should occur in the political branch. Unless and until the people’s elected representatives cast their votes to change our state’s longstanding policy against casino gambling, petitioner’s application is premature. Neither an administrative agency nor the judicial branch should trump the legislative process.
I would reverse the circuit court’s order and reinstate the judgment of the State Board of Education denying the application for a license for petitioner’s school.

A court could issue arrest or search warrants for on-site casino gambling in petitioner’s school. The school’s operators could be charged under MCL 750.302; MSA 28.534 as persons who indirectly assist in the keeping of a gaming house, and the students could be charged as loiterers in a place of illegal occupation.