Camarillo, CA Gambling & Gaming: Card Room Licensing (2026)

38, rewritten in full by Ordinance 1135 in 2017, is a blanket local gambling ban rather than a licensing scheme, so Camarillo authorizes no card rooms or poker rooms under its own code. 010 makes it unlawful to maintain any property used for gambling where a game not already listed in California Penal Code Sections 330, 330a, or 337a is played with cards, dice, billiard balls, pool balls, cues, or any other device for money, checks, chips, credit, merchandise, or anything of value. 020 mirrors that prohibition against the players themselves: betting or playing such a game anywhere in the city is unlawful.

030's charitable fundraising exception, which lets a qualifying nonprofit run 'controlled games' as defined in Penal Code Section 337j(e) once per calendar year, for no more than five consecutive hours, if it secures all required state approvals under Business and Professions Code Sections 19985 through 19987, checks that every participant is at least 21, awards no cash prizes or wagers, caps any individual prize at $500 and total prizes at $5,000, and sends at least 90 percent of gross event revenue to the nonprofit itself.

Outside that narrow charity carve-out, there is no path in Camarillo's own code to operate a card room; a state-licensed gambling establishment would still need a separate city authorizing ordinance under the state Gambling Control Act that Camarillo has not adopted.