DOI Part 293, two years in: how the new compact rules reshaped tribal-state talks
The rule was framed as clarifying. In practice it has changed what tribes and states put inside compact documents — and what they no longer can.
The Department of the Interior's 2024 update to 25 C.F.R. Part 293 — the federal regulations governing the Secretary's review of Class III tribal-state gaming compacts — was, when it took effect, framed as a clarifying revision. Two years on, it has become something more consequential. The rule has reshaped what tribes and states put inside compact documents, what they leave for separate negotiation, and how aggressively states attempt to bargain on subjects IGRA does not directly authorize.
The rule's most discussed provision was its explicit allowance for compacts to address remote wagering — sports betting and other gaming initiated off Indian lands but routed through servers on tribal lands. That language, drawn directly from the Seminole hub-and-spoke framework in Florida, was treated at the time as a recognition of existing practice. In hindsight, it has done more than that.
What the rule actually says, in plain language
Part 293 sets out the categories of subject matter a Class III compact may address. The 2024 revision expanded that list in several directions. Compacts may now explicitly address remote wagering deemed to occur on Indian lands. They may address allowable revenue-sharing — drawing a clearer line between substantial exclusivity that justifies a payment and other subject matter that does not. And they specify the kinds of provisions the Secretary will treat as falling outside the scope of IGRA — and therefore not approvable as part of a compact.
That last category — what the Secretary will not approve — is where the rule has had its quiet structural effect. States can no longer slip non-gaming subject matter (broad jurisdictional concessions, off-topic regulatory grants, tax-base questions unrelated to gaming) into a compact and expect approval. That subject matter has to live in a separate agreement, not embedded in a document the Secretary will see.
The negotiating dynamic has shifted
In conversations with tribal compact attorneys across half a dozen states, a common observation: the rule has rebalanced compact talks in favor of tribes on most questions, and in favor of states on a narrower set. Tribes can now point to the rule and say no to off-topic state demands without being accused of obstruction. States retain leverage on subjects that genuinely fall within IGRA's directly-related test — public safety, regulation, dispute resolution.
Where the rule has produced the most movement is mobile sports betting. Multiple states that had been negotiating without a clear federal template are now using the Florida framework, sometimes with minor variations, as the working draft. That is true not because Interior has mandated any particular structure but because the rule's explicit acknowledgment of remote-wagering compact authority has removed a layer of legal risk both sides were previously pricing in.
The result, two years in, is that the Seminole compact framework is no longer a one-off. It is, in practical effect, a federal regulatory template — even though it does not appear in the rule by name.
What states have tried to push back on
Not all states have welcomed the rule. Several governors have, in correspondence with Interior, raised concerns that the revised Part 293 narrows their negotiating room on subjects they previously treated as bargainable. The most-cited examples: state tax-base questions, off-reservation enforcement matters, and labor-relations provisions. Interior's response, in its rulemaking record and subsequent guidance, has been that IGRA does not authorize Class III compacts as vehicles for resolving those broader questions, and that nothing in the rule prevents states and tribes from reaching separate, non-compact agreements on them.
That answer has not entirely satisfied state interlocutors, but it has not produced a meaningful legal challenge to the rule itself. The window for direct administrative-law challenges has effectively closed. What remains is litigation around individual compact approvals.
What Part 293 changed, in one sentence
It expanded what compacts can authorize (notably, off-reservation remote wagering deemed to occur on Indian lands), and it narrowed what states can demand inside a compact (subjects unrelated to gaming).
Where the rule still leaves ambiguity
Two areas remain genuinely unsettled. First, the relationship between Part 293's remote-wagering allowance and individual state constitutions. Florida's constitution was tested in the West Flagler litigation and survived. Other states have constitutions that say different things. The rule does not — and could not — answer the question of whether a state's own constitution permits its governor to enter a compact that authorizes mobile sports betting deemed to occur on tribal lands.
Second, iGaming. The rule's language addresses remote wagering generally. Whether that extends to full online casino games — slot equivalents, table games — or only to sports betting is a question Interior has, so far, declined to answer in advance of a concrete compact submission. Most tribal gaming attorneys read the rule's language as broad enough to include iGaming. State attorneys general have, in several states, taken the narrower view.
The medium-term picture
Two years is short for an administrative rule of this scope. Litigation around individual compacts will likely set the contours of the rule's reach more than the rule itself does. But the early evidence is that Part 293 has changed compact talks in a durable way — less by what it explicitly authorizes than by what it removes from the table. For tribal sovereignty in the gaming space, that is, in its own quiet way, one of the more significant developments of the decade.
For background on the underlying statutory framework, see our Legal Guide to IGRA and Class III gaming. For ongoing market context, see our coverage of the prediction-markets challenge to tribal exclusivity, which sits adjacent to many of the same questions.