The Bay Area’s most closely watched “reservation shopping” fight has turned decisively against the casino.
On July 30, 2026, Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, William Kirkland, signed a 39-page reconsidered decision concluding that the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians “has not demonstrated the requisite significant historical connection” to its 160-acre parcel in Vallejo. That means the land “does not qualify as restored lands,” and the band “may not conduct gaming on the Parcel pursuant to IGRA’s restored lands exception.”
Two months later, the band’s attempt to undo that ruling failed. On Sept. 30, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the District of Columbia denied Scotts Valley’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The bid “fails on all four factors,” he wrote, according to the Daily Republic. Scotts Valley “has not shown likelihood of success on any of its claims,” and “the equities and public interest weigh decisively against” relief. The Sacramento Business Journal reported that the ruling keeps the tribe’s temporary preview casino closed while its lawsuit continues.
A decade of reversals
Scotts Valley, whose homeland is around Clear Lake in Lake County, first asked Interior in 2016 to take the Vallejo land into trust and declare it “restored lands” eligible for gaming. Interior said no in 2019. A federal judge sent that decision back in 2022. On Jan. 10, 2025, in the final days of the Biden administration, Interior reversed itself, approved the restored-lands opinion and took the parcel into trust.
Within weeks, the new administration’s Interior leadership had second thoughts. In a March 27, 2025 letter, the department said it had “not consider[ed] additional evidence submitted after the 2022 Remand” and temporarily rescinded the opinion, inviting new evidence. Around the same time, Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, United Auburn Indian Community and Lytton Rancheria sued to overturn the opinion. A court later found the abrupt rescission violated Scotts Valley’s due-process rights, but it allowed Interior to keep reconsidering. The July 30 decision is the result.
The project the band envisioned was large. The Daily Republic describes a $700 million resort near Interstate 80 and Highway 37, with an eight-story casino, 24 tribal homes and a 45-acre biological preserve.
What Interior found
The core finding is about evidence. Interior accepted that the band has “modern connections” to the land and a “temporal connection” to its restoration. It rejected the claim of a significant historical connection. It found that a mission baptism record the band relied on was not its ancestor Augustine, and that evidence of ancestors working on North Bay ranches did not show they used the Vallejo parcel. “The problem here for the Band is qualitative,” Kirkland wrote.
The decision also makes a point that matters for every tribe fighting over Bay Area land. The Indian canon, the rule that ambiguous laws are read in tribes’ favor, “has no applicability to the weighing of evidence,” Interior said, quoting its own 2025 opinion. Judge McFadden noted that both sides agreed on that point at the hearing.
Yocha Dehe Chairman Anthony Roberts welcomed the ruling. “Vallejo is Patwin ancestral territory, and we will never relinquish our responsibility to care for and protect these lands,” he said in a statement quoted by the Daily Republic.
The Ohlone shoreline in the record
Whose land is it, then? Interior did not decide that, but the decision shows how contested the question is. Opponents argued Vallejo was Southern Patwin territory. Experts submitted on Scotts Valley’s side disputed that. One called the Patwin view “outdated.” Another, quoted in the decision, wrote that “the shallow peninsula that includes Vallejo … was not Patwin territory, but Costanoan.” Costanoan is the older name for the Ohlone. The band’s experts pointed to Karkin village communities along the Carquinez Strait. The Karkin were an Ohlone, or Costanoan-speaking, people of the Carquinez Strait.
So, in a fight between a Pomo tribe and Patwin tribes over a casino in Solano County, the experts for one side placed the land in Ohlone country. None of the region’s Ohlone tribes is federally recognized, so none has a seat at that table under federal gaming law.
That is the double standard this paper wrote about in January 2025, when the Vallejo project looked like a done deal. Members of Congress who cite casino fears to oppose Muwekma recognition had little to say as a Lake County tribe moved to build a resort on the edge of Ohlone territory. “This is not about a casino. It’s about our rights,” Muwekma Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh told The Stanford Daily in 2024.
What’s next
Scotts Valley’s suit continues before Judge McFadden, and the lawsuits filed by Yocha Dehe, United Auburn and Lytton remain stayed, according to the decision. Vallejo, meanwhile, had negotiated a mitigation deal under which the band agreed to pay the city $502,000 a year for three years, plus $100,000 up front, the Daily Republic reported. With gaming blocked, what happens to that agreement is an open question.
The Muwekma Times will follow the case.
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