Virginia Casino Gaming Eligible Host City Rules

Casino gaming is not legal statewide in Virginia. Va. Code § 58.1-4107(A) states, 'The conduct of casino gaming shall be limited to the following eligible host cities,' then sets out five narrow eligibility categories rather than naming cities outright. Category 1 covers any city where at least 40 percent of assessed real estate value is tax-exempt (per the Department of Taxation's FY2018 report) and population fell at least 7 percent between 1990 and 2016. Category 2 covers cities with 5 percent unemployment (2018), 20 percent poverty (2017), and a 20 percent population drop since 1990. Category 3 adds an adjacency requirement to a border-region tourism-district state. Category 4 covers larger cities (population over 200,000) with at least 24 percent tax-exempt real estate. Category 5, added later, uses 2019-2020 poverty and unemployment data. Only a handful of Virginia cities, Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Richmond among them, have met one of these five tests.

Meeting the eligibility test is only step one. An eligible host city's governing body must select a preferred operator, submit it to the Virginia Lottery ('the Department') for a preliminary financial and operational review, and only then petition the circuit court to schedule a local referendum. The ballot question asks voters whether 'casino gaming be permitted at a casino gaming establishment in (name of city and location) as may be approved by the Virginia Lottery Board.' A majority 'yes' vote is required before the Lottery Board can accept and process an operator's formal license application under § 58.1-4109. If the referendum fails, the city cannot hold another one on the same question for three years from the vote date.

Operating a casino gaming establishment without the city eligibility finding, Lottery Board certification, and a successful referendum is unlicensed gambling, addressed under Virginia's general illegal-gambling statutes (Va. Code § 18.2-325 et seq.). Within the licensing process itself, § 58.1-4109(E) makes it a Class 4 felony for anyone to knowingly make a false statement on an operator's license application. A failed local referendum also locks the city out of resubmitting the same question for three years.