By Diamante Asberry, ACLU of Nevada Communications Intern

As the Nevada Legislature approaches the final days of the 2021 session, housing justice advocates are disappointed by all the opportunities that legislators have left in the dust.

Nevada is in the midst of an unprecedented public health and economic crisis. Thousands of community members have faced evictions and housing instability because of the pandemic, and the Legislature has had plenty of chances to bring the people of our state real relief. Instead advocates and activists have watched as lawmakers caved to special interests and money over and over.

Nevada badly needs affordable housing, tenants’ rights, and eviction reform, and the Legislature must be held accountable for its failure to provide those protections.

Here are some housing justice bills that died in the Assembly this session:

Assembly Bill 310, sponsored by Assemblywoman Considine, aimed to revise provisions governing residential rental properties by having property managers register their rental properties so that there would be data on the rental market.

Assembly Bill 317, sponsored by Assemblywoman Gonzales, sought to prohibit source of income discrimination in landlord tenant law so that landlords could not refuse to rent based on public benefits.

Assembly Bill 332, sponsored by Assemblywoman Peters, aimed to require landlords to register with a state database and be more transparent with their tenants regarding rental increases.

Assembly Bill 331 and Assembly Bill 334 each sought to fund affordable housing development, but they were met with strong opposition from realtors. The bills were sponsored by Assemblywoman Marzola and Assemblywoman Summers-Armstrong, respectively.

Assembly Bill 449, sponsored by Assemblywoman Benitez Thompson, aimed to revise provisions regarding tax abatements to account for affordable housing.

Senate Bill 218, sponsored by Senator Ratti, sought to protect renters from predatory fees and create a 3-day grace period for paying rent. 

There is still hope for housing justice reforms this session. The fates of Assembly Bill 141 and Assembly Bill 161, which both deal with eviction, are still uncertain. AB141 seals no-cause eviction records to help Nevadans secure housing during and after the pandemic, and AB161 creates an interim study to look at the summary eviction process.

The legislature must do better to protect Nevadans. Housing is a human right.

CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD

By Diamante Asberry, ACLU of Nevada Communications Intern

Nevada needs police reform.

In the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict, it is clear that police officers across the nation must be held accountable for their actions. 

In this year’s session, the Nevada Legislature has started to acknowledge the need for change in policing. 

In the first hearing for Senate Bill 212 in March, bill sponsor Dallas Harris made it clear that police use of force is a racial justice issue.

“Reno is the deadliest city for Black men at the hands of police in the United States,” said Harris.

“We should expect our peace officers to preserve and protect, and to do so we must modernize our approach to use of force to understand the issues, report the data, provide alternative techniques, train officers, and create a culture where use of force is the absolute last resort.”

SB212 will create a statewide standard for police use of force and require officers to use de-escalation techniques before resorting to deadly force. The bill will also require law enforcement agencies to submit annual reports regarding police use of force. 

DeRay McKesson, prominent civil rights activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero, urged Nevada legislators to take action at the hearing. Campaign Zero is a nationwide advocacy organization fighting for police reform. 

“This is an opportunity to actually do something that will save people’s lives,” said McKesson. “We want to put these rules in place to be preventative.”

Sam Sinyangwe, another Campaign Zero co-founder, informed the Senate that Nevada police killed 147 people between 2013 and 2020, and that Nevada has the fifth-highest rate of fatal police violence in the U.S. 

The ACLU of Nevada believes we need to regulate police use of force and work to end racial profiling and police violence in our state.

“It’s imperative that we strengthen our use of force policies to reduce incidents of police violence, address issues of other types of violence, help officers feel prepared to use other alternatives to deadly force, and use data to improve the systems of justice,” said Harris. “SB212 is our path to success for making Nevada a safer place to live, work, and thrive.”

SB212 is one of many police reform bills being considered at the 2021 Legislature. 

Another proposal by Harris, Senate Bill 236, aims to tackle the issue of implicit bias in policing and will require a third party to record, collect, and statistically analyze Nevada traffic stop data to identify patterns of profiling. It will also establish early warning systems to identify police officers who display bias indicators or other problematic behavior.

SB212 and SB236 must pass. We need to place meaningful regulations on police officers to minimize harm inflicted upon Nevadans who are Black, indigenous, and people of color.

Share your support for SB212 and SB236 with your legislators

Watch the full SB212 hearing below.

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By Diamante Asberry, ACLU of Nevada Communications Intern

After a hearing on March 31, the Nevada Assembly voted to pass Assembly Bill 395 to the Senate. This historic piece of legislation seeks to eliminate the death penalty in Nevada and convert all existing death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The bill, championed by Assemblyman Steve Yeager, is a crucial step forward for Nevada. The death penalty is barbaric, inefficient, costly, and racially-biased. Twenty-three states have outlawed the practice so far. Nevada must be next.

Tom Viloria, who has handled many murder cases and capital litigation as a prosecutor in Northern Nevada, spoke in support of abolition during the hearing and emphasized the procedural issues surrounding capital punshment.

“The process of selecting those cases for the death penalty is inherently flawed,” said Viloria. Meetings for death penalty cases would last only one or two hours, and “typically the only person (in these meetings) who had read the file front to back was the assigned prosecutor.”

“There’s no check and balance on that individual prosecutor’s decision,” said Viloria.

Scott Coffee, an attorney with the Clark County Public Defender’s Office, presented financial statistics that highlight the ineffectiveness of capital punishment. 

Coffee said that, of the 150 capital cases in Clark County over the past decade, there were 16 capital verdicts, five of which have since been overturned.

“We spent $75 million to put 11 people on death row,” said Coffee, a longtime proponent of abolition. “This system can’t be fixed.”

In addition to a flawed selection process and exorbitant costs to the state, statistics overwhelmingly show that the death penalty in Nevada disproportionately impacts people of color.

“In Nevada, 37% of death row inmates are Black, though African Americans represent 9% of the population,” said Dr. Tyler Parry, assistant professor of African American African Diaspora Studies at UNLV.

Parry said it’s not a coincidence that capital punishment became more prominent as lynchings waned.

”Formalized executions were nicknamed ‘legal lynchings,’” he said. “America’s vigilante forms of anti-black violence were replaced with state-approved killings of Black people.”

Parry cited Nevada’s reputation as “the Mississippi of the West” in his call for the end of the death penalty, saying that the state has had longstanding issues with Jim Crow-style segregation and heavy-handed policing.

Speakers pointed out in the hearing that capital punishment offers a false promise to victims, who may never receive the closure they need. Cynthia Portaro, whose son was murdered a decade ago, pointed out that the death penalty does little to help victims heal.

“Whether my son’s killer is in jail for life or on (death row),” said Portaro, “There is no closure.”

Portaro said that while she sympathized with other families who felt angry over having loved ones taken from them, she “didn’t want another young life taken” in the wake of her son’s death. Instead, she advocated for better support for victims and their families to receive counseling and financial assistance.

“When you spend the millions and millions and millions of dollars on this person that’s in prison, my thoughts are, why aren’t we assisting victims more?” said Portaro. “$1,000 is what we were given for counseling. It takes a little bit more than $1,000 to help somebody walk through such a difficult journey of their loved one being traumatically killed.”

It is time for Nevada to end the death penalty once and for all. Not only does it fail to provide closure to victims and their families, but it also directly harms people of color and misuses funds in ineffective procedures. 

AB395 must receive a hearing and a vote in the state Senate. We will not rest until this bill is on Gov. Sisolak’s desk.

“Take action. Don’t put this off this year,” said Justice David Cherry in his address to the Assembly. “2021 should be the year that Nevada got rid of the death penalty.”

Send a message to your senator in support of AB395

Watch the full hearing below.

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