Arbitration panel rules US tribe to pay the pending dues

An arbitration panel ruled that the Seneca Nation tribe, which stopped honouring the revenue-sharing deal with New York after renewal of a contract in 2017, must pay the pending revenue share.

In 2017, the tribe stopped the payment arguing that a drafting omission had released them from their obligation to pay the revenue-sharing agreement. That moved them to stop paying the state’s share from the three gaming venues it operates in western New York, which would already amount to over US$100 million.

A three-member arbitration panel has ruled that the Seneca Nation wrongly halted more than $100 million in revenue-sharing payments to the state derived from the three gambling halls it operates in western New York.

“A majority of the Panel… supports the conclusion that ‘renewal’ means that the Compact was continued on the same terms and conditions that were in place immediately prior to expiration of the Compact’s initial term which entailed revenue sharing for exclusivity,” the ruling argues. “To conclude otherwise and interpret ‘renew’ to mean that the Nation gets exclusivity without sharing revenue would render several provisions of the Compact meaningless, ignore the purpose of the Parties’ agreement, challenge common sense and produce a commercially unreasonable result.”

According to Kevin Washburn, a University of New Mexico Law School professor, former Interior Department official and the member of the panel chosen by the tribe (voted against), the decision “rewrites the Compact in a way that harms the Nation and provides an unjustified windfall to the State.”

Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong added: “While we know we are right on the law, we also knew that making that argument to an arbitration panel gave no assurance of an opinion in our favor. As is often the case, the Courts, and apparently arbitration panels, do not always decide cases on the law, even their law. We have prepared for this circumstance, and, now that the panel has issued its opinion, we will take the appropriate time to review and respond to the opinion, and move forward.”