Deputy Editor
Texas Card House (TCH) appears to have won a definitive legal victory against the city of Dallas, fending off a shutdown attempt that reached the Texas Supreme Court. The court declined to hear the city’s final appeal, ending a three-year legal battle.
The TCH victory seems to clarify the legal status of Texas card rooms in Dallas for the moment.
Doug Polk, who partially owns TCH competitor The Lodge, called the result “a tremendous victory for poker in the state of Texas.”
“This ruling was the biggest possible win to protect our right to play poker,” he wrote on X. “Shuffle up and deal!”
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TCH Wins After Winding Road
The path to victory for TCH was certainly anything but smooth. Both sides won victories in court en route to the final destination of the Texas Supreme Court.
TCH, whose website claims it has more than 75,000 members, operates two clubs in the Dallas metro area and four others in various Texas locations. It received a permit from the city to open in 2020. In December 2021, it was ordered to shut down.
Owner Ryan Crow filed an appeal with the city’s Board of Adjustment and won.
Armed with $500,000 in funding granted by the city for the legal fight, Andrew Espinoza, chief building official of the city of Dallas, won an initial court case against TCH. They alleged that TCH violated the state penal code’s “prohibition on gambling and keeping a gambling place.”
Texas card rooms operate on the premise that they are social clubs rather than gambling establishments. They use a legal workaround of charging membership fees rather than raking games. However, their ambiguous legal status creates problems on two fronts. On the one hand, they can face harassment by prosecutors, such as TCH experienced. At the same time, they’re left to deal with problems like cheating on their own, without assistance from the authorities.
TCH filed an appeal. On Aug. 27, 2024, the Court of Appeals, Fifth District of Texas ruled in the card room’s favor.
Espinoza and the city took the case to the Texas Supreme Court with a final appeal. On Sept. 5, the Texas Supreme Court issued a denial of the petition for review.
The Lodge Files Brief in Support
One interesting wrinkle of the case calls was that it led to two competitors joining forces against the city. Lodge Card Clubs filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of TCH.
The 18-page brief, dated Aug. 22, argues that the card rooms are in full compliance with the law via “private place” safe harbor language:
In Texas, poker clubs have openly operated state-wide under the safe harbor provisions of Penal Code §§ 47,02(b) and 47.04(b) with the knowledge of local law enforcement and municipal authorities. Several cities—Austin, San Antonio, and others—have even enacted ordinances regulating club operations. This regulatory participation is inconsistent with the City of Dallas’s present theory that such clubs are per se illegal.
…The economic consequences of closing poker clubs — loss of thousands of jobs, millions in tax revenues, and significant harm to related businesses — are real, substantial, and relevant to proper statutory interpretation.
D Magazine in Dallas wrote that, “If Crow had lost in appeals, it would have likely meant the closure of hundreds of similar poker rooms across the state.”
If Polk and his fellow Lodge Card Clubs co-owners agreed that their very industry was at risk, it made sense to step in on behalf of TCH. For now, Texas poker players can breathe a sigh of relief. Given the pitched legal battles in the state over the status of the clubs, though, more chapters figure to be written still in the coming years.
Image credit: Josh*m/Flickr (license)
