Court Cases

We're challenging Clark County's pedestrian flow zone ordinance for its vague language that allows LVMPD to selectively enforce and, in effect, selectively target people. Our client uses a manual wheelchair, and under this ordinance, could be charged with a misdemeanor for stopping to take a break. In January 2024, the Clark County Commission voted to establish pedestrian flow zones on the pedestrian bridges at the Las Vegas Strip and charge people with a misdemeanor for stopping or standing on these bridges.

Jordan Polovina is a cellist and street performer who was cited by police for playing music on a pedestrian bridge on the Las Vegas Strip. While officers claimed Polovina violated a rule against stopping or standing in a pedestrian area, dozens of other people were standing in the same space before, during, and after the citation and were not cited. Polovina was cited under a county ordinance that makes it a misdemeanor to (1) stop or stand within any Pedestrian Flow Zone, or (2) intentionally causing another person who is within a Pedestrian Flow Zone to stop or stand. A conviction can carry jail time for up to six months of a fine of up to $1,000. We’re asking the court to dismiss the charge against Polovina because he was singled out for playing music, an activity protected by the First Amendment. Law enforcement targeted him for his expression, rather than enforcing the rule equally. In addition to this case, the ACLU of Nevada represents Polovina in a related civil lawsuit challenging the same ordinance. The lawsuit, McAllister v. Clark County, argues that the ordinance violates First and Fourteenth Amendments and the right to due process.

In yet another result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision, in July 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction against a 1985 Nevada law requiring parental notification for abortion procedures for minors. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, a 501(c)3 health care provider, quickly filed litigation to block the notification law from negatively affecting access to abortion care in Nevada. ACLU and ACLU of Nevada argue in a new amicus brief that a lower court ruling used incorrect legal standards. The amicus brief also examines the procedures that are required under the 1985 law, including interviews and court hearings for young people seeking judicial bypass. Such processes differ from county to county, with some courts having no processes in place at all.

In 2023, a Reno police officer pulled over a driver and took her cell phone, claiming he needed to verify her insurance coverage. Instead, he unlawfully accessed and copied intimate photographs of the driver without her knowledge or consent. Nine months later, Sparks police detectives came to her home, showed her the photos, and confirmed they were taken from her phone. The driver, Bluth, sued to get access to public records about the investigation, but the lower court found that the investigative and privacy interests outweigh the public and personal interests, even without reviewing the records privately. The court only provided records related to her individual case. We filed an amicus brief, alongside the Boyd School of Law’s Survivor Representation & Advocacy Clinic, supporting Bluth’s appeal. We’re asking the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s decision and make clear that the government can’t use victims’ rights as an excuse to avoid accountability.

We are representing Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (SJP UNLV), a student group that protests Israel’s military actions in Palestine and exercises its First Amendment rights by organizing protests and advocating on social media, and has also urged UNLV administrators to stop supporting Palestinian people by not investing money in groups tied to Israel. We stepped in after another UNLV student who disagreed with SJP UNLV’s views sued the group, along with several other defendants, under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and for intentional infliction of emotional distress, even though the student did not show how UNLV SJP assisted in terrorism or explain how they were harmed. We filed a motion to dismiss, asking the court to dismiss the case because SJP UNLV’s advocacy is protected by the First Amendment, and the student failed to provide sufficient facts related to claims of infliction of emotional distress. We also filed a second motion under Nevada’s anti-SLAAP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws, which protects people and groups from lawsuits meant to silence speech on public issues.

In 1979, appellant Robert Ybarra Jr. was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by a jury. Mr. Ybarra lives with serious mental illness, and the jury that sentenced him to death was not instructed that it needed to find beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating ones, such as mental illness. Capital defendants who live with serious mental illness, like Mr. Ybarra, are more likely to be sentenced to death. This is because symptoms of their mental illness often impair trial and appellate proceedings, leading to unreliability in sentencing. The ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project and State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Nevada, filed an amicus curiae brief arguing that Article 1, section 6 of the Nevada Constitution—which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment—bars the execution of individuals with serious mental illness. As the brief argues, executing capital defendants with serious mental illness is cruel and lacks penological justification. It further argues that executing capital defendants is unusual given evolving standards of decency and increased protections for individuals with mental illness. Amici urge the Court to recognize that executing capital defendants with serious mental illness is unconstitutional and to categorically exempt this population from execution.

The ACLU of Nevada and Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice filed an amicus brief in Song Spencer & James Spencer v. City of Henderson, urging the Nevada Supreme Court to allow people to recover attorney’s fees as special damages in successful challenges in civil asset forfeiture cases when the government wrongfully seizes their property. Our amicus brief argues that Nevada law already allows recovery of attorney’s fees in cases when warranted, even when there is no law directly on point, and that principle should apply here, when someone is forced to sue the government to get their own property back. This case is a challenge to the constitutionality of civil forfeiture laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada filed this case on behalf of eleven individuals whose constitutional rights were violated by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Rio Hotel. On August 19, 2018, our plaintiffs were having a birthday celebration at the Rio Hotel. Each of the 34 guests in attendance that evening is Black. LVMPD, aided by Rio staff, stormed in with no warrant and no reason to believe that any crime was being committed. Despite having no reasonable suspicion, LVMPD officers handcuffed and searched every single guest in attendance. Each guest was made to sit in the hallway of the Rio handcuffed with no access to food, water, or restroom facilities for up to 6 hours. LVMPD alleged that the birthday party was a “gang party,” but no guest was arrested for any criminal gang activity. We’re suing to end LVMPD’s racially discriminatory practice of indiscriminately and unlawfully detaining and searching individuals in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.