Louisiana Shields Private Home Card Games From Bans

Two separate statutes answer whether a friendly card game or a private club's game night is legal in Louisiana. La. R.S. 33:4852 lets a parish police jury 'suppress and prohibit gambling with cards, or any card game by whatever name the game may be called, at which anything of value is pledged, bet, or hazarded', a broad grant of local authority over card wagering. The same sentence in the same section then carves the ground out from under that power: 'This Section shall not apply to any private game played in a private home occupied by a family as such, or game in private clubs, conducted without rake-off for gain.' Because the exemption sits inside the statute that creates the parish's authority in the first place, no parish ordinance passed under R.S. 33:4852 can reach a card game hosted in a private home by the people who live there, or a private club's card night, so long as the club or its members take no rake-off, cut, or house fee from the pot.

The state's general criminal gambling statute, R.S. 14:90, backs this up independently. It defines the crime as 'the intentional conducting, or directly assisting in the conducting, as a business, of any game, contest, lottery, or contrivance whereby a person risks the loss of anything of value in order to realize a profit.' The 'as a business' phrase is doing the work: a basic violation is punishable by a fine up to $500 or up to six months in jail, and an operation run by five or more people that is substantially continuous for 30-plus days, or that grosses $2,000 or more in a single day, escalates to a fine up to $20,000 and up to five years at hard labor. None of that reaches a home poker game or a bar's friendly cribbage table where no one is skimming a profit off the top, there is no 'business' to prosecute.

Because both statutes build the exemption into the definition of the offense, there's no permit or registration to seek: private home and no-rake-off club card games simply aren't prosecutable gambling. What crosses the line: any organizer who takes a cut, rake, or house fee turns the game into a 'business' under R.S. 14:90, exposing everyone involved to the $500/six-month misdemeanor penalty, or the $20,000/five-year felony tier once five or more people and continuous, high-volume play are involved. Parish sheriffs and district attorneys enforce both statutes.