First Amendment

The Nevada Dept. of Motor Vehicles provided inaccurate information in a legal proceeding about DMV chats with federal immigration officials via Signal, an encrypted messaging platform

Carson City District Judge Kristin Luis says she’s leaning toward imposing civil penalties against the Nevada DMV for failing to comply with the law in its responses to requests from the ACLU Nevada for the state agency’s communications with ICE agents, as well as the Department of Homeland Security.

ACLU of Nevada Requests Civil Penalties Against DMV 

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.

We’re defending Alexander Bellus, a man who was cited by the City of Las Vegas for allegedly distributing food and water at a public park to people experiencing homelessness as part of his religious practice. 

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.