California’s Cardroom Communities Need Your Help.

Attorney General Rob Bonta introduced new cardroom regulations in May 2025 that would decimate the cardroom industry.

Cardrooms play important roles in local communities, as major revenue generators for city general funds and supporters of local organizations and community groups. They are highly regulated and taxed businesses that operate legally and provide local gaming options for many communities. 

What’s at Stake?

The proposed regulations would potentially deny local residents the ability to enjoy gaming in their own cities and towns, decimate thriving businesses, and devastate working families, all while ignoring the century-and-a-half legal tradition of local, licensed, and already heavily regulated cardroom gaming. 

Cardrooms support over 10,000 jobs in Los Angeles County alone, many of them held by residents of color from communities with limited economic opportunity. The regulatory changes that the Tribes are pushing would decimate that workforce, lead to layoffs, shutter local businesses, and unravel the fragile support systems that hold our communities together.

Attorney General Bonta’s actions don’t level the playing field—they tilt it even further toward the long-standing goal of California’s tribal casinos to secure a de facto monopoly over gaming in the state. By imposing new restrictions and interpretations that disproportionately burden licensed cardrooms while leaving tribal operations untouched, the AG is accelerating a regulatory imbalance that threatens competition, local revenues, and consumer choice. Instead of promoting fairness or public safety, these moves effectively advance a decades-old strategy: constrict the lawful cardroom industry until tribal casinos stand as the only remaining gaming option in California.

Why Take Action Now? 

The Attorney General has until April 2026 to finalize these regulations. We need your help speaking out against these regulations and encouraging him to abandon them because of their harmful impacts. California's cardrooms are community anchors and support their patrons, employees, communities and cities.

What You Can Do Now

1. Join the coalition on behalf of your organization, business or yourself.
2. Sign up to receive ongoing updates, regular newsletters and opportunities to take action.
3. Send a letter to the Attorney General encouraging him to abandon the regulations and rethink the dismantling of cardrooms, support of monopolization and the encouragement of stripping important city revenue from cities that need it most.
4. Share a social media graphic and tag @agrobbonta.

The Latest from the Coalition

The Coalition to Protect Cardroom Communities has been working hard to share and amplify the voices against these harmful cardroom regulations.

• Over 1,000 Californians signed a petition urging the Attorney General to withdraw the regulations.
• The Latin Business Association joined the Cardroom Coalition to oppose the proposed cardroom regulations.
• The Coalition launched the Love Your Local Cardroom Campaign to share messages across social media, newsletters, websites, and in-person at cardrooms for patrons and cardroom employees to take action.

In the News

Los Angeles Business Journal

OpEd: Bonta’s Cardroom Regulations are ‘Anti-Business’

California Attorney General Rob Bonta proposed new cardroom regulations last May that, without a clear statement as to why the changes are needed, will upend the game approvals issued by the prior attorney generals over the last 25 years and cause significant harm to cardrooms and the diverse communities where they are located.

These regulations are not only anti-community, but they are also anti-business, especially with small business owners in Los Angeles. 

Cities like Hawaiian Gardens, Commerce and Bell Gardens – home to over 100 Latino-owned businesses and proud members of the Latin Business Association – could face devastating economic consequences if these regulations go into place.

CalMatters

Judge shuts down California tribes’ latest bid to crush their casino rivals

Over the years, casino-owning tribes have spent millions in court, in the Legislature and at the ballot box trying unsuccessfully to force their only competitors out of California’s casino business. 

A judge today blocked their latest effort.

Last year, tribes persuaded the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to allow them to sue gambling halls called card rooms over the tribes’ claim that they have exclusive rights to offer Las Vegas-style gambling in the state.

Since the tribes are sovereign governments, they had lacked standing to sue the private businesses until Newsom signed Senate Bill 549, which gave the tribes one shot this year to resolve their dispute in Sacramento County Superior Court.

The Sacramento Bee

California card room employees urge Rob Bonta to drop proposed regulations

THIS ISN’T A GAME

California card room employees are fighting for their jobs in the latest chapter of a long-running feud between tribal casinos and their smaller gaming rivals.

Around 150 people protested outside Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office on Wednesday, calling on him to not follow through with proposed regulations that would make major changes to the current operation of card rooms.

Card rooms are not legally allowed to play “banked” games, where the house is pit against players, however they’ve gotten around it with a complex system of “player-bankers” employed by Third-party Providers of Proposition Player Services and a version of blackjack that the AG’s office argues is different from the real thing in name only.

Stay informed.

protectcardroomcommunities.com