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

Chapter 6.20 of the La Mesa Municipal Code, Cardrooms, Poolrooms and Bowling Alleys, defines a cardroom in Section 6.20.010 as any room or enclosure furnished or equipped with a table used or intended to be used as a card table for the playing of cards and similar games. Section 6.20.030 then flatly prohibits that activity: no person, firm, corporation, society or club may engage in, carry on, maintain or conduct a cardroom anywhere in the city, whether run for hire or not, and it makes no difference whether the operator is acting as principal, agent or employee.

The only carve-out sits in Section 6.20.020: the chapter does not reach a private family setting where cards are played for amusement and no charge is made, so a home poker night among family stays outside the ordinance while a commercial cardroom does not. Unlike the rest of Chapter 6.20, which lets the city council issue permits and set annual fees for public billiard rooms, pool tables and bowling alleys under Sections 6.20.050 through 6.20.113, cardrooms get no such licensing path at all: the prohibition in 6.20.030 leaves nothing for the city council to permit.

That distinction matters for anyone trying to legalize a card game business locally under the state Gambling Control Act, because Business and Professions Code Section 19960 requires a city to affirmatively authorize card clubs, and La Mesa's own code does the opposite. Enforcement runs through Section 6.20.120, the chapter's general penalty clause, which treats any violation of Chapter 6.20 as an infraction subject to the code's general penalty provisions in Section 1.01.080, except where Section 1.01.130 applies.