Pope County Bets on a Long Shot to Revive Casino License

The Legends Resort & Casino office in Russellville remains open. Jennifer McGill, who works there and is a plaintiff in the suit, declined to be interviewed. [steve lewis]

After six years of legal wrangling, supporters still have a roll of the dice to save plans for a $320 million Cherokee Nation casino and resort in Russellville.

A three-day federal trial is set next month in Little Rock in the tribe’s effort to revive its Pope County casino license, which voters statewide voided by approving Amendment 104 to the Arkansas Constitution on Nov. 5.

Cherokee Nation Businesses LLC of Catoosa, Oklahoma, sued shortly after the vote, asking the federal courts to find Amendment 104 unconstitutional and halt it from taking effect. The tribal business has invested scores of millions of dollars in the gambling hall project, Legends Resort & Casino.

“There’s definitely still a strong desire and a lot of hope,” CNB spokeswoman Allison Burum told Arkansas Business late last month. “The legal team has stayed busy preparing for the bench trial scheduled for March 25.”

Pope County Judge Ben Cross, who has supported the Legends plan for years, expects to testify. And whatever the trial decides, he expects an appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

“[The lawsuit] is seeking for the federal courts to declare the state constitutional amendment unconstitutional” under the Takings Clause, the Contracts Clause and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process provisions, Cross said in a Jan. 23 interview.

“I can’t speculate on how any of that will come out … but I would anticipate that whichever side prevails, the other side will have an opportunity to seek an appeal.”

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall, who will preside in Little Rock, “reluctantly” declined to stop Amendment 104 from taking effect in November. He said in a hearing that the plaintiffs’ team made “good arguments.”

Cherokee Nation Businesses has a lot of skin in the game. It spent at least $35 million on 200-plus acres of land along Interstate 40. Many millions more went for plans for a grand casino, resort and hotel, as well as in legal costs. CNB donated $13.3 million to Investing in Arkansas, the ballot question committee that fought against Amendment 104, known on the ballot as Issue 2.

A rival casino operator, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, gave a whopping $17.65 million to Local Voters in Charge to promote Issue 2, which voters statewide approved 55% to 45%. The Choctaws have a casino resort in Pocola, Oklahoma, so close to the Arkansas border that some of its parking is over the line in Fort Smith.

The spending more than doubled the state’s previous record for costliest ballot issue battle.

The Choctaws favored the amendment for competitive reasons, Cross said.

According to an order by Judge Marshall, Amendment 104 did three things:

“It repealed the Arkansas Racing Commission’s authority to issue a casino license in Pope County; it revoked Cherokee Nation Entertainment LLC’s preexisting casino license there, and it prescribed a new process by which casino licenses may be issued in the future.”

The Racing Commission approved the Cherokee license on June 27. It was the last of four casino licenses that Arkansas voters authorized in November 2018. The others went to Oaklawn in Garland County and Southland in Crittenden County, which already had betting operations, and to the Quapaw Nation in Jefferson County.

The Quapaw promptly built Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff, but the Pope County license climbed a twisting path through the courts. (See timeline.) The Arkansas Supreme Court set aside two different versions of the license, one to the Cherokee and another to Gulfside Casino Partnership of Gulfport, Mississippi.

And immediately after the Cherokees gained the most recent license from the Arkansas Racing Commission last summer, it came under fire.

A well-funded ballot question committee, Local Voters in Charge, got to work, and eventually prevailed in November.

LVC moved to join the federal case, but drew a rebuff. “LVC’s intervention risks gumming up the works in this fast-paced case,” Marshall wrote in a Dec. 12 order. “The parties must sprint through expedited discovery to reach the March 2025 trial. … The state has defended — and continues to defend — Amendment 104 with fervor.”

Bart Calhoun and Scott Richardson of McDaniel Wolff PLLC in Little Rock are leading the case for the plaintiffs: CNB, its affiliate Cherokee Nation Entertainment LLC and an employee at Legends’ promotional office in downtown Russellville, Jennifer McGill.

Richardson argued that voiding the license conflicts with the U.S. Constitution. Amendment 104 unlawfully voided a duly granted casino license worth untold millions and nullified a $70 million economic development contract with Pope County and its municipalities, the plaintiffs said.

“I signed the economic development contract,” Cross said. “It’s a binding business document that was put into the record of the Arkansas Supreme Court and previous litigation. We have a monetary interest and a monetary loss from the taking of the license.” The contract was with a valid license holder at the time, Cross said, adding that the loss was substantial.

“It was $38.8 million up front, and direct cash payments to every municipality in Pope County, the county itself, and a multitude of nonprofits, every volunteer fire department and every school district,” Cross said. CNB also agreed to fund a nonprofit to support Pope County nonprofits with annual contributions of $2 million.

“The validity and legitimacy of that document, and how [losing it] affects us, will all be points brought up in the trial,” Cross said.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Ryan Hale, speaking on behalf of the defendants in the November hearing, said the CNB entities received “all of their due process at the state level” when the Arkansas Supreme Court cleared the ballot issue for voters to consider Nov. 5.

In his decision not to enjoin Amendment 104’s enforcement, Judge Marshall noted that injunctive action requires a judge to believe that the parties seeking relief were likely to prevail on some points at trial. But Marshall said that, “for various reasons,” he believed that “the Cherokee will not prevail” in their lawsuit.

The defendants are Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her official capacity as governor, along with the seven members of the Arkansas Racing Commission.

Cross is uncertain if Pope County will ever get a casino, and he counts the loss as huge. CNB had planned a $320 million casino with 50,000 SF of gaming space, along with a full-amenities hotel resort with 200 guest rooms. He has also noted that the state imposes a tax on casino gaming receipts and turns back 27.5% of it to the city (19.5%) and the county (8%) in which the casino is located. Jefferson County and Pine Bluff shared about $7 million of that tax money from Saracen, the state’s latest casino, in 2023.

Cross said his constituents are frustrated and “disgusted” with the way the campaign took shape.

“This became the most expensive constitutional amendment in the state’s history,” Cross said. “If it was about local voters being in charge, that’s ironic. Because the whole state decided for us in 2018 one way, and the whole state decided again the other way in 2024. In both respects, it went against the will of the local voter.”