Caesars Sportsbook has asked a federal judge in New York to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Cayuga Nation over mobile sports wagers the tribe says were taken from inside its reservation. In an Aug. 17 motion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, the company argued that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act does not give the Nation a viable claim against a private sportsbook and that New York’s mobile-betting rules place the wager where the operator’s servers sit, not where the customer happens to be.
According to reporting from GamblingNews and SoloAzar, the Cayuga Nation filed suit in June claiming Caesars accepted mobile bets from people physically located within its 64,015-acre reservation between January 2022 and July 2025 without tribal permission. The Nation says that conduct violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which treats sports betting as Class III gaming and bars it on tribal land without a federally approved tribal-state compact. The tribe also says it has no Class III compact with New York.
The Nation’s lawsuit seeks damages, disgorgement of profits and records showing how much Caesars made from wagers placed on the reservation. It also says Caesars’ advertising misled users into thinking its products were available throughout New York without explaining the special rules that apply on tribal land.
Caesars pushed back on that theory in its dismissal bid. It said the absence of any agreement between New York and the Cayuga Nation means there was no compact for the company to breach, and argued that if New York’s framework conflicts with federal tribal gaming law, the quarrel is with the state and its regulators. The company also said its servers were not located on Cayuga land.
The dispute sits against the background of both federal tribal gaming law and New York’s mobile-betting system. The National Indian Gaming Commission says IGRA, enacted in 1988, established the federal framework for gaming on Indian lands, which it defines to include reservation lands. New York’s Gaming Commission says mobile sports wagering is authorized when a bet is made electronically from within the state and transmitted to and accepted by equipment at a licensed commercial casino facility.
The Cayuga Nation says it sent Caesars a cease-and-desist letter in 2025, after which the sportsbook stopped taking wagers from within the reservation and tightened its geofencing. Caesars also declined to provide records on the number of transactions and revenue tied to those bets. The Nation has until Sept. 22 to respond to the dismissal motion, and Caesars then has until Sept. 29 to reply.
