Cayuga Nation sues Caesars over on-reservation betting

The Cayuga Nation filed a complaint on June 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, alleging Caesars Sportsbook accepted mobile wagers from devices physically located on the tribe’s 64,015-acre reservation between January 2022 and July 2025. The tribe contends those wagers fall under Class III gaming rules in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).

Under IGRA, Class III gaming may be conducted on Indian lands only under a tribal–state compact approved by the federal government. The Cayuga Nation says it has not entered a compact with New York and that Caesars therefore lacked authority to accept bets on reservation land.

The complaint seeks declaratory relief, compensatory damages, disgorgement of profits and an accounting of all revenue tied to the alleged unauthorized wagering activity.

According to the filing, tribal officials sent Caesars a cease-and-desist letter in June 2025. The complaint states Caesars agreed to geofence its operations from the reservation in July 2025. In September 2025 the Nation asked for records of wagers and revenue tied to the reservation; Caesars declined to provide those records, the filing says.

The suit also includes a false-advertising claim under the Lanham Act. The complaint alleges Caesars marketed its sportsbook as available broadly across New York without disclosing that mobile sports betting was not lawfully available on Cayuga lands, creating the impression the product was available “everywhere within the State, without geographic restriction.”

The filing cites Ho-Chunk Nation v. Kalshi, a federal case in which a court last year allowed IGRA claims against a prediction market operator to proceed. By referencing that decision, the Cayuga complaint advances a legal theory that IGRA can be used to challenge gaming activity that occurs on tribal lands without tribal authorization. The lawsuit does not name any prediction market operators as defendants.

Parts of the complaint highlight wagers placed by users the filing describes as 18 years old and not subject to state or tribal oversight. New York mobile sportsbooks require customers to be at least 21, while some prediction market platforms allow participation at age 18; the complaint raises the age difference as part of its concern about unregulated activity on reservations.

The Nation has pursued related claims before. A federal judge last year allowed the Cayuga Nation’s lawsuit against the New York State Gaming Commission to proceed after the tribe alleged the state conducted unauthorized Class III gaming on reservation land through lottery sales without a tribal–state compact.

In a press release, Cayuga Nation representative Clint Halftown described Caesars’ operations on the reservation as an “illegal encroachment on our sovereign rights.” Nation attorney David Burch has previously reported that other mobile sportsbooks voluntarily geofenced the reservation after contact from tribal officials.

The case remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, where the tribe asks the court to apply IGRA to mobile wagers received while a device is physically on reservation land and to require accounting and disgorgement of profits tied to those wagers.