A judge is ordering the city of Dallas to reinstate a poker room’s permits to operate. The decision comes after the city issued the business a certificate of occupancy and promptly revoked it — sparking a years-long legal battle.
The Fifth District Court of Appeals issued an opinion on Tuesday stating TCHDallas2, which operates the poker room that had its permits revoked, “conducted its operations without making any changes for nearly fourteen months after the issuance” of the permits — and the operation was not prosecuted by the district attorney, or any other agency.
When the permits were revoked by the city in 2021, Texas Card House appealed to the Dallas Board of Adjustment, which overturned the city’s decision.
The city of Dallas then essentially began suing itself for the board’s overruling of the building department. That battle has cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Tuesday’s ruling means the card house will get its certificate of occupancy.
“We conclude the trial court thereby erred in failing to afford the required deference to the [Board of Adjustment’s] decision,” Justice Bonnie Lee Goldstein said in her opinion. “The court must not substitute its discretion for the [Board of Adjustment’s].”
Goldstein continued that “if reasonable minds could have reached the conclusion” the board did, the trial court had to uphold that decision. Goldstein’s opinion essentially said the trial court should have conducted an “abuse of discretion review.”
“...Which basically means you have to do an analysis to show that the previous body, the Board of Adjustment in this case…either did not exercise discretion or was so plainly mistaken about the law, that it amounted to an abuse of discretion,” Philip Kingston, an attorney, and former Dallas City Council member, told KERA.
Kingston said the context of the board’s original opinion — to reinstate the card house’s license — is extremely clear about the process it took.
“The board of adjustment considered this incredibly carefully and then voted by super majority to overturn a building official’s opinion,” Kingston said. “What [Goldstein] should have said is ‘look this is all legal under the penal code, cut it out’.”
District 1 Council Member Chad West has called out officials for what he says is wasteful spending by the city ultimately suing itself.
“I have been pushing staff to find a legal path forward for these businesses,” West told KERA in a text. “It looks like the courts decided to do the job for us.”
West said card rooms employ hundreds of Dallas residents, generate sales tax revenue that can be used to pay for public safety and parks and provide “a safe place for people to play cards.”
Kingston said Goldstein’s opinion could leave future potential card house operators trying to obtain permits, in legal limbo. If a potential operator tries to file for certificates of occupancy to open a new poker room, Kingston says the city should cite this specific example and move ahead with the permits.
“If they had bad judgement, which they have demonstrated in the past few years on this issue specifically, and said ‘no don’t process the application’, I would go to the board…and probably get the same result that Texas Card House got two years ago,” Kingston said.
The other option, according to Kingston, is to have the city council tell the city attorney’s office to “lay off.”
“This is enough of a rebuke of the court that [the city attorney] shouldn’t take this tact again,” Kingston said.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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