MIAMI — In the legal tug-of-war over the future of casino gambling, Las Vegas Sands won one on Friday, but the Seminole Tribe of Florida still holds the cards.
Leon County Circuit Court Judge Angela Dempsey denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at stopping the Seminole Tribe from blocking a petition-gathering campaign for a constitutional amendment backed by Sands, the casino giant, that would allow card rooms in Florida to operate casinos.
Dempsey rejected the motion to dismiss the lawsuit and said she would continue with a hearing she set earlier this week for Tuesday, Dec. 14, to hear evidence and decide whether the tribe’s clients are unfairly interfering with the petition-gathering effort.
Sands has created a political committee called Florida Voters in Charge and hired two petition-gathering businesses to collect nearly 900,000 signatures by the Feb. 1, 2022, deadline for the measure to be placed on the November 2022 ballot.
But the group faces a daunting deadline of Dec. 30, 2021, to get the signatures to county elections officials in time for them to validate their authenticity by Feb. 1.
The amendment would allow card rooms to be converted to Las Vegas-style casinos under the condition that they are located 130 miles from the tribe’s Hard Rock sites in Tampa and near Hollywood and other casinos. If approved, the measure would undercut the Seminole Tribe’s monopoly on casino games, which Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature reauthorized in a gambling agreement signed in May.
But time is running out on the effort, and the group claims that a political committee and organizers hired by the Seminole Tribe have unfairly attempted to interfere with their operations, costing them precious time.
The Sands group alleges that Cornerstone Solutions, a West Palm Beach-based company founded by Rick Asnani, and organizers Mark Jacoby and Kara Owens paid petition gatherers to not work in Florida until Feb. 1, the deadline for all signatures to be validated. They claim that the tribe-backed group hired workers to intimidate and interfere with their petition gatherers, and are running an informal signature-gathering operation aimed at confusing voters.
But William Shepherd, lawyer for the clients of the tribe, urged Dempsey to dismiss the lawsuit for several reasons. He said that the Sands’ plaintiffs have not identified who and what is the subject of the alleged interference into the petition-gathering effort. He said they did not attach any contract but instead “hide behind anonymous employees.” And they are asking the court to approve hiring freezes and salary caps, which violates federal and state law.
“It must be dismissed to protect and preserve the free labor markets in our state.” he said.
But James McKee, an attorney for the Sands’ clients, said Shepherd’s arguments “completely misrepresent the complaint.”
The case isn’t about competition between competitors, he said, but “an orchestrated scheme of fear, intimidation, and attempt to pay off contracted petition circulators all for the purpose of not hiring workers.”
He said that petition gatherers were paid by Cornerstone and the other organizers to ”physically to get on a plane, leave the state” and show proof they had left. They were allowed to come back “on the magical date of Feb. 1, 2022, the date that signatures are due to be filed with the Department of State.”
Asnani, who heads Cornerstone, denied any wrongdoing.
“We’re doing nothing illegal; we’re doing nothing wrong,’’ he said in a statement to The Miami Herald earlier this week.
After a vigorous back and forth between Shepherd and McKee over whether or not either side had the names of the people involved in the allegations, Dempsey ordered McKee to produce the contracts and names of the petition gatherers that are alleged to have been interfered with by 6 p.m. on Friday. Shepherd was given until Monday at noon to produce his witness list.
“I’m trying to formulate a fair but expedited process to some extent,’’ Dempsey said. “It’s not a complete emergency. I mean, no one’s gonna die.”
The court will hear the evidence in the case on Tuesday.
