Court Cases

In conjunction with the national ACLU, we’ve filed a motion to intervene in this case to protect Nevada voters and ensure people can participate in our democracy freely, safely, and without fear.

In 2024, the Republican National Committee, the Nevada Republican Party, Donald J. Trump for President 2024, and an individual voter filed a lawsuit against the Nevada Secretary of State, challenging how the state maintains its voter rolls. The lawsuit claims that Nevada is not doing enough to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls and is asking the court to force major changes to how the state verifies voter eligibility and maintains voter registration records. We filed an amicus brief, in partnership with the Protect Democracy Project, raising concerns that the lawsuit seeks to rely on data that may not exist and verification methods that cannot reliably determine citizenship status. Our brief warns that replacing Nevada’s current system with untested and unreliable processes could result in eligible voters being wrongly flagged or removed from voter rolls. In August 2025, the court dismissed some of the plaintiffs’ claims, including claims brought under Nevada election law and the Nevada Constitution. However, the court allowed the plaintiffs’ Equal Protection and Due Process claims to move forward. As this case continues, the outcome could shape how Nevada maintains its voter rolls and administers elections ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

ACLU of Nevada, alongside the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), filed an amicus brief asking the court to dismiss a case challenging Nevada's efforts to maintain its voter rolls. The case, Republican National Committee v. Aguilar, was filed against Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar by the Republican National Committee, the Nevada Republican Party, and a Nevada voter, claiming the state must be violating its obligations under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) because certain misleading metrics show more registered voters than eligible voters in some counties. The amicus brief explains that the lawsuit is based on deeply flawed and misleading metrics that have been pieced together by unreliable and inaccurate measures of voter registration rates and that have been repeatedly rebuked by federal courts. The voter registration numbers they rely on are taken from a single recent snapshot of the state's voter roll, but use an outdated census of the citizen voting age population for comparison. Unfortunately, this lawsuit is just one of several cases recently filed across the country with claims under the NVRA and is part of a years-long pattern to bully states into administering voter roll purges beyond what the law requires. Without proper guardrails, when states rush to purge voters, eligible voters, in many cases, are kicked off the rolls and disenfranchised. These lawsuits are based on false information and only erodes the public's trust and integrity in our elections.