California Tribes Call Failed CLARITY Act Vote A Win
- California senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff both voted no as the Senate rejected CLARITY Act cloture 49-50 Tuesday.
- The vote fell 11 short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, which lacked the tribal sports-betting ban CNIGA sought.
- CNIGA Chairman James Siva called the result a victory but said the underlying problem remains unsolved.
- Sen. Thom Tillis filed a motion to reconsider the vote, keeping the question alive as the Senate nears recess.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff joined 48 other senators in voting no as the Senate rejected cloture on the CLARITY Act 49-50 Tuesday, a defeat California’s tribal casino industry called a victory days after demanding Senate leaders keep the bill off the floor.
How California’s Senators Voted
Padilla and Schiff cast their votes on Senate roll call vote 234, the cloture motion on taking up H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The tally left the bill 11 votes short of the 60 that cloture requires.
Both California senators had signed a July 17 letter, led by Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., asking the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees for an Indian Gaming Regulatory Act savings clause and a ban on sports and casino-style event contracts, and six days before the roll call the California Nations Indian Gaming Association urged the Senate to amend the CLARITY Act on the same two conditions, in a Sept. 9 letter to Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The text senators actually voted on carried neither protection.
CNIGA Calls The Result A Win, With A Caveat
CNIGA Chairman James Siva called the vote “an important victory for Tribal Nations” in a statement issued after the result was announced, adding that “a sports bet by another name is still a sports bet.”
Siva said the defeat does not settle the dispute. “This vote gives Congress another opportunity to get this right,” he said, calling on any future version of the CLARITY Act to protect IGRA, preserve tribal-state compacts and make clear that digital-asset or commodities law cannot be used to bypass tribal and state gaming law. “Tribal Nations made our concerns clear,” Siva said. “Today, the Senate heard us. Now the work continues.”
Federally regulated prediction markets still sell sports contracts to Californians even though the state’s voters rejected sports betting outright in 2022, the same gap that has kept California online gambling unsettled and that CNIGA’s Sept. 9 letter was written to close.
What Happens Next
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., “voted no in order to make a motion to reconsider,” the Senate’s daily floor log records, and entered that motion at 3:01 p.m. once the result was announced. The motion lets Thune call the same cloture vote back up without filing a new one, though no date has been set.
The Senate’s 2026 schedule has it leaving Washington for a state work period from Oct. 5 to Nov. 6, past the Nov. 3 midterms, leaving the rest of September and the first days of October to act before then. The tribes’ related fight at the 9th Circuit over Kalshi’s sports contracts remains undecided regardless of what the Senate does next, leaving gambling in California governed for now by whatever federal courts and Congress settle on, not state law.