BY TOM SOMACH

What the U.S. government gives, it can take away.

Redskins in South Carolina are blue over a poker decision made by the highest court in America.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a South Carolina Indian tribe’s bid to install video poker machines on its reservation, the Associated Press reported.

The court, without comment, turned down the appeal from the Catawba Indian Nation, A.P. reported.

The tribe was challenging a state Supreme Court ruling that a state ban on video poker also applies to South Carolina’s only Federally-recognized Indian tribe, A.P. reported.

Video poker machines were outlawed statewide in South Carolina in 2000, but Indians, whose reservations are legally classified as “independent nations,” say those laws don’t apply to them.

The Catawbas had argued that their 1993 land deal with the state allowed them to use video poker machines on their reservation.

The tribe’s attorney, Jay Bender, said the Catawbas will continue their decade-long efforts.

“The tribe has to find economic development activities within the artificial constraints imposed by the state,” Bender told A.P.

“At every opportunity, the state has tried to trim back what it agreed to give the tribe to get the land claim settled,” he continued.

“I guess in my cynical evaluation I have continued to believe that screwing Indians is still public policy in South Carolina.”

The Catawbas became the nation’s 317th recognized tribe on Jan. 19, 1994.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)