High Court Turns Back Tribes’ Bid : Gambling: Casino operators sought to overturn rulings that a popular video gaming machine can be used only with state permission.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned back a bid by Indian tribes to use a popular type of video gambling machine in their casinos without permission from their home states.

The justices refused to consider an appeal filed by eight tribes--three of them from California--to lower court rulings that they must have gambling compacts with their states to legally use so-called video pull-tab machines.

The action was quickly applauded by California officials who have sought for several years to limit the scope of tribal gambling, saying that much of it--particularly gambling machines--is illegal here.

More than a dozen California tribes have installed a variety of such machines anyway, some offering as many as 1,000 in their expanding gambling halls.

“It’s a big victory,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Cathy Christian, who has represented the state in negotiations with the tribes. “It clarifies any ambiguity about those machines.”

The tribes, however, still have a suit pending before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that seeks to force the state to accept wide-ranging casino gambling, including the profitable video devices. The tribes argue that technology employed in the California Lottery’s own Keno game has, in effect, “opened the door” for them to offer electronic gambling. A federal judge in Sacramento previously ruled that the state was not negotiating the issue in good faith.

The case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court did not involve all electronic gambling, but one class of machines designed largely for Indian gambling halls. Tribal attorneys argued that these did not need state approval because they are little more than dispensers of pull-tab tickets, which are legal--and commonly sold--in bingo halls.

Among the plaintiffs were three California tribes active in gambling--the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Rumsey Rancheria and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians--along with others from North Carolina, Alabama, New Mexico, Washington and Oklahoma.

Their suit was prompted by a 1992 ruling from the National Indian Gaming Commission that while the tribes could offer bingo or poker parlors without state approval, the pull-tab machines required compacts--much like off-track betting, blackjack and other casino gambling.

A federal judge upheld the commission’s decision, as did the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court offered no comment in leaving those rulings intact.

The tribes complained that they could lose hundreds of millions of dollars if forced to stop using the machines.

Although Monday’s decision could empower federal prosecutors to seize scores of pull-tab machines being used without state sanction, authorities in recent years have avoided such confrontational tactics when it comes to tribal gambling, preferring to let the courts first settle the considerable litigation swirling over the multibillion-dollar industry.