[3] In the 2000s, the newly recognized Cowlitz Tribe began planning for a casino and hotel complex on trust lands near La Center to bring in revenue.

[4] In 2013, the Cowlitz Tribe were granted the rights to establish a 152-acre (62 ha) reservation near La Center along Interstate 5, which would be home to a casino pending local approval.

[25][26] On January 31, 2011, shortly after the Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the Cowlitz Tribe's application for the land trust, a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to appeal the decision.

The lawsuit concerned the 2009 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Carcieri v. Salazar that forbid the federal government from taking land into trust for tribes recognized after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934.

[27] The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included the City of Vancouver, Clark County, the owners of the La Center cardrooms, local landowners, and a group known as "Citizens Against Reservation Shopping".

Rothstein ruled that the U.S. Secretary of the Interior had the authority to take land into trust for the Cowlitz Tribe, citing the phrasing of the 2009 Carcieri decision that did not include the word "recognized".

[30] Vancouver and Clark County immediately ended their involvement in the lawsuit,[26] followed by the Grand Ronde in October,[31] leaving Citizens Against Reservation Shopping and the La Center casinos as the remaining litigants in their appeal.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in early April 2017, ending the legal battle over the Ilani Casino Resort shortly before its scheduled opening.