Court Cases

On Oct. 4, 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada filed a lawsuit against Nye County to prevent the county from moving forward with its proposed unlawful hand-counting scheme during this year’s elections. We are representing Nye County voters who risk having their freedom to vote suppressed by the county’s proposed procedures for this year’s election. The case is ACLU of Nevada v. Nye County, Case No. CV22-0503. We are asking the Fifth Judicial District court to prohibit the county from publicly announcing the selected candidates on each ballot prior to the close of polls on Election Day, from limiting the use of ADA touch screens to individuals with so-called “special needs,” from allowing election workers to ask about a voter’s disability or turn away otherwise eligible voters based on arbitrary decision making, and from using “stringent signature verifications” that violate state law. UPDATE: On November 15, 2022, the Supreme Court of Nevada denied issuing a ruling to stop Nye County from conducting a hand-count of ballots received in the 2022 midterm election.

On May 11, 2021, the ACLU of Nevada and the Policing and Protest Clinic at the UNLV Boyd School of Law filed an amicus brief in Cates v. Stroud, a case on petition for review before the United States Supreme Court. The case calls into question the qualified immunity doctrine and arises from an incident in which a Las Vegas woman was subjected to a humiliating strip search during a visit to Nevada’s High Desert State Prison in violation of her constitutional rights. The brief urges the Supreme Court to grant the petition and review the case. For Nevada, qualified immunity creates a serious problem: If there are no state-level mechanisms for addressing civil rights abuses, and the federal courts won’t do it, how does our community protect their constitutional rights?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada Foundation filed this case to secure the release of two men who are being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Henderson Detention Center. Our plaintiffs are medically vulnerable and at risk of severe illness or even death because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Constitution requires that detention facilities ensure the health and safety of the people in their care, but these facilities are unable to implement social distancing and other medical best practices to prevent exposure. The people housed at the Henderson Detention Center have already been exposed to COVID-19. Jail officials confirmed on March 28 that 13 individuals held in ICE detention there have been isolated in individual cells after they were transported by an ICE agent who later began to show symptoms of COVID-19. The only remedy to this constitutional issue is to release our plaintiffs. UPDATE: On April 2, 2020, the court dismissed the case.

The ACLU of Nevada and Prudhomme Law Office filed a petition for judicial review on December 16, 2016, with the Nevada District Court on behalf of Mr. Mohammad Al Falahi, seeking a de novo review of the denial of Mr. Al Falahi’s naturalization application by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The petition alleges that Mr. Al Falahi is otherwise eligible for citizenship, but his application was denied solely because USCIS surreptitiously subjected him to the unconstitutional Controlled Application Review Resolution Program (CARRP). CARRP is a little-known, unconstitutional program that disproportionally targets citizenship applicants from Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities. Under CARRP, USCIS unjustifiably labels law-abiding citizenship applicants as “national security concerns” based on lawful religious activity, national origin, and innocuous associations. Applications subject to CARRP are subject to substantial delays and are ultimately denied for pretextual reasons, all without ever being told why their applications were treated differently than other applicants.