NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — Two Lake County tribes are facing legal headwinds in response to the U.S. Department of Interior’s approval earlier this year of their out-of-county casino projects.

The projects, proposed by the Koi Nation of Northern California and Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians of Lakeport, have faced significant opposition from other tribes and communities alike.

Now, both casino proposals — one in Windsor, the other in Vallejo — appear to be headed toward lengthy legal battles that could slow or halt them altogether as the result of lawsuits filed in federal court over the past month.

The suits fault the process to approve the casinos for failing to take into account community and tribal input, as well as glossing over environmental concerns.

The casino projects also were opposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. In August, Matthew Lee, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s senior advisor for tribal negotiations and deputy legal affairs secretary, wrote to Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to urge the federal government not to approve them.

Lee’s letter raised concerns about the projects being focused “less on restoring the relevant tribes’ aboriginal homelands, and more on creating new gaming operations in desirable markets.”

Despite the governor’s opposition, at the start of January, the Department of Interior gave approval to the two projects in the waning days of the Biden administration, under Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

The agency greenlighted the projects in the face of heavy opposition both from the communities where the projects will be located and from other tribes who said the Koi and Scotts Valley were trying to get casinos well outside of their ancestral lands.

In February, four Sonoma County tribes filed lawsuits against the Department of Interior for the approval of the casino development in Windsor proposed by the Koi Nation, formerly based in Lower Lake.

The Koi Nation’s Shiloh Resort & Casino is slated to be built on 68 acres at 222 E. Shiloh Road in Windsor. It will include 2,500 gaming machines, a 400-room hotel, along with restaurants, a meeting center and spa.

On Feb. 14, Graton Rancheria filed its lawsuit, which on March 20 was consolidated with another suit it had filed for declaratory and injunctive relief against the Department of Interior in November.

Lytton Rancheria, Dry Creek Rancheria and Cloverdale Rancheria filed their joint suit against the government on Feb. 21.

Then, on Monday, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the Kletsel Dehe Band of Wintun Indians filed a lawsuit challenging the decision by the Department of the Interior to allow the Scotts Valley Pomo to build its casino in Vallejo.

Scotts Valley’s $700 million, 400,000-square-foot mega casino complex, along with 24 homes and an administrative building, will be located on a 128-acre site near I-80 and Highway 37.

Connections to ancestral land and process

The Graton lawsuit, like those that would follow, faults the government’s procedural approach, calling it flawed.

It also claims that the government “steamrolled” important statutory protections “in their regulatory sprint” to approve the Koi Nation’s project, “regardless of applicable legal requirements.”

In the suit filed by Lytton, Dry Creek and Cloverdale, the tribes assert that the action to approve the Koi casino project was driven by personal connections. They argue it also will have huge impacts nationwide.

“Defendants’ actions depart from decades of precedent and practice that carefully scrutinized the connections between Indian tribes and the land upon which they wished to build gaming facilities. The effects of Defendants’ actions will be enormous: they set a precedent for
green-lighting casinos in virtually any location throughout the United States, no matter how tenuous an Indian Tribe’s connection to the proposed casino site may be. And, upon information and belief, that was the point of the final agency decision to approve the Koi application,” the lawsuit complaint states.

The suit alleges that Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the time of the relevant approvals, is a former attorney for Koi who, during his tenure at the Bureau of Indian affairs, “significantly broadened” the agency’s “interpretation and implementation of statutes and regulations governing Indian gaming facilities in a manner that facilitated approval of Koi’s and other tribes’ applications.”

They emphasize that the Koi’s territory is 50 miles away from the casino site, and that the tribe has no significant historical connection to Windsor.

Another point used in the suits is the Koi’s series of lawsuits against the city of Clearlake over the city’s efforts to build a new commercial center on the former Pearce Field property as well as the Burns Valley sports complex.

“In these lawsuits,” the Lytton suit notes, “Koi characterized territory near Clear Lake as ‘the area of traditional and cultural affiliation of [Koi]’” with “archaeological, cultural, and Tribal Cultural Resources.”

Vallejo casino lawsuit cites violations of federal law

The suit filed this week against the Scotts Valley tribe notes that the Vallejo location was meant for open space and contains cultural sites sacred to the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.

The Yocha Dehe has fought the project for years, arguing that it will lead to desecration of its homelands and faulting the federal government for a process that it said dismissed community and other tribes’ concerns.

The lawsuit identifies fundamental violations of multiple federal laws intended to protect tribal governments, their ancestral homelands, and their people.

The two tribes also said their suit reveals that, in an effort to ensure the decision was issued during the change of presidential administrations, Department of Interior, or DOI, officials misled local tribes, refused to consult with them, and ignored their evidentiary submissions.

“It is heartbreaking that the Biden Administration chose to spend its final days approving a mega-project on our sacred Patwin homelands without ever consulting our Tribe. This has left us no choice but to pursue legal action to protect our people, our homelands, and our rights,” said Yocha Dehe Chairman Anthony Roberts. “Our filing shows how former DOI officials acted recklessly and illegally in an effort to avoid federal laws which are in place to ensure transparency, fairness and agency accountability.”

The Yocha Dehe said the 2025 decision about the Scotts Valley project represents an unexplained change of position for the United States.

The Department of Interior previously determined on three separate occasions, under presidential administrations of both political parties, that Scotts Valley lacks a significant historical connection to the city of Vallejo and is therefore prohibited from acquiring so-called “restored” gaming lands there, the Yocha Dehe said in a Monday statement.

“While the incoming presidential administration may reconsider the challenged approval — welcomed by Yocha Dehe and Kletsel Dehe — the imminent, acute harms to cultural resources on Patwin homelands, among other impacts, required the tribes to seek judicial relief in the meantime,” the tribe said in a Monday announcement.

“This is about more than a casino, it’s about protecting the integrity of the land-into-trust process and ensuring decisions are made fairly, lawfully, and based on true historical ties,” said Charlie Wright, chairman of the Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation. “Our tribe has always stood firm in defense of our lands and heritage, and this case is no different. Scotts Valley has no documented cultural connection to Vallejo, and allowing this approval to stand sets an ominous precedent that undermines Tribal sovereignty and weakens the foundation of federal-tribal land policy. We fully support tribes securing land within their rightful homelands, but no tribe should be allowed to bypass established legal and historical standards. When federal agencies fail to uphold these principles, we have a duty to hold them accountable.”

In their filing on the Vallejo project, the tribes said the DOI refused to comply with clear, mandatory legal requirements, including the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106, which protects historic and sacred sites — misleading tribal, state, and other federal agencies in the process.

They also faulted the Department of Interior for cutting short the environmental review process and ignored evidence of the significant environmental consequences on local tribes and the surrounding community.

The federal defendants have 60 days to answer the complaints.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, and on Bluesky, @erlarson.bsky.social. Find Lake County News on the following platforms: Facebook, @LakeCoNews; X, @LakeCoNews; Threads, @lakeconews, and on Bluesky, @lakeconews.bsky.social.