CBS – A statewide ban on video gambling means that South Carolina’s only federally recognized tribe cannot have a casino on its York County reservation, the state’s highest court ruled Wednesday.

In its unanimous opinion, the South Carolina Supreme Court disagreed with the Catawba Indian Nation, which has argued that a state law allowing gambling cruises to leave from South Carolina ports also means the 2,800-member tribe can offer the same games at a reservation gambling hall.

The tribe had been appealing a circuit judge’s 2012 ruling that, not only does the law that allows cruise ships not give the Catawbas the right to gamble, but that the tribe gave up that right voluntarily in its settlement agreement.

In that agreement, signed in 1993 with state and federal governments, the tribe agreed to drop a lawsuit claiming that broken treaties dating back to Andrew Jackson’s presidency meant they should get hundreds of square miles of land. In exchange, the tribe was given its current reservation and permission to open two bingo halls, as well as any additional gambling allowed by the state.

It’s that last provision — to the same extent allowed under state law — that entitles the tribe to video gambling, since the gambling cruise ships are allowed, Catawba attorney Billy Wilkins argued before the court in January. Justices disagreed, saying that the state’s overall gambling ban has been in place since 2000, so the tribe’s argument is moot.

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