A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a suit filed by an admitted pathological gambler who claimed Foxwoods Resort Casino violated federal and state law by failing to enforce a self-exclusion agreement that was supposed to prevent him from gambling at the casino.

In a decision filed Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that federal district court in Connecticut had properly ruled that it lacked jurisdiction in the case due to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe's sovereign immunity to suits by nontribal members. The tribe owns Foxwoods.

Bruce Tassone, 50, of North Adams, Mass., who filed the case on his own behalf, said he planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I'm disappointed," he said in a phone interview. "The judges didn't agree with my arguments. They felt tribal nations are protected by sovereign immunity, so the merits of my case were a nonstarter.

"But that won't deter me."

He said he would be satisfied if Foxwoods agreed to enforce its self-exclusion agreements.

"People who ask to be self-excluded should be protected from themselves," he said. "That means not sending them literature, not cashing their third-party checks and not giving them credit — all things that Foxwoods has never denied doing, by the way. Right there, that shows duplicity.

"I don't care that they're sovereign. That's wrong."

The appellate court rejected Tassone's argument that the casino violated U.S. racketeering laws pertaining to bank, wire and postal fraud when it processed his credit card transactions and solicited him with advertisements.

According to the appellate brief he filed, Tassone lived at Foxwoods while working full-time in the Boston area from 2000 to 2004, a period during which he gambled and lost nearly $3 million.

"Every morning he would leave his room at the casino and drive to work and every night he would return and gamble, most nights all night long," Tassone wrote, referring to himself. "When he lost his job in 2003, he seldom left the casino."

In 2004, Tassone requested Foxwoods permanently bar him from the casino.

From 2005 to 2006, he served an 18-month federal prison term after embezzling more than $600,000 from his employer to cover gambling debts. He remained free from gambling for more than six years before returning to Foxwoods in 2010 after receiving an advertisement from the casino, according to his brief.

For more than a year, Tassone gambled and frequently stayed at the casino hotel "without (Foxwoods) questioning his presence or enforcing the self-exclusion contract."

The tribe successfully defended itself on jurisdictional grounds, maintaining its immunity from suit in federal court.

Tassone and attorneys for the tribe argued the case before the appellate court last month.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com