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Originally Posted by darrelplant
Don't you think the city's legal team would have at least given things a look-see before they went to the Supreme Court to keep La Center's nose out of the tent?
That's my entire point: I have a hunch "the lawyers" hadn't even looked at how the games were operated until this case came about. The "conspiracy theory" I referenced wasn't La Center's pressure (obviously that's common sense), but the lawyers sitting down with the City and talking about how the games are most likely violating the law in some respect. "Conspiracy" was the wrong word, more a wild speculation. Oral argument before the Supreme Court was on May 10, 2016. With the effective completion of the Supreme Court case and the BOLI ruling, the timing was right for city attorneys to address the ways the games conflict with state law and give Holm the go-ahead to start doing something about it, i.e., write warning letters and issue fines).
I see this mentioned on the NW Poker page, and I think you've actually mentioned it before, so it's worth stating: it is entirely misleading or inaccurate to say anything along the lines of "La Center already sued the City and lost." For those without knowledge, that statement infers a court has already decided that social games are "legal." That's not true, and provides false hope. Beyond the initial Complaint and briefing that ended up not being addressed, that ENTIRE case was about standing, and addressed issues MUCH broader than social games, issues that were very important to the City.
What do you think was more important to the City: keeping social games alive, or stopping out-of-state interests from interfering with the City's regulations and operations? I have very little doubt the later issue is the ENTIRE reason the City fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The League of Oregon Cities intervened at the appellate level; do you think they would have done that if the issue was only social gaming? Of course not (the ACLU intervened as well, effectively on the side of La Center; pretty sure they weren't in it with the goal of shutting down poker rooms).
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I don't know anyone who's said anything of the sort.
Those exact words? No. You just have the armchair-lawyers coming up with brilliant ideas like "let's put board games behind the counter" and other ways to wink-wink-nudge-nudge things, thinking that will solve all the problems. Again, the law is not a fan of pretext.