Passed as amendments to the Nevada Constitution in 1994 and 1996, term limit laws in Nevada are well over 30 years old.

But aspects of term limits — which restrict the amount of time governors, lawmakers, local government officials and others can spend in office — are still being debated in court. 

Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed against North Las Vegas Councilman Scott Black arguing that he should be barred from running for mayor, because if elected he would exceed 12 years on the council by the end of the four-year term. Though it was filed on behalf of a voter by attorneys linked to the state Democratic Party, Black's top opponent — Nevada State Democratic Party Chair and Assm. Daniele Monroe-Moreno (D-North Las Vegas) — denied any connection to the lawsuit. 

Black has said the suit is a sign his opponents don't believe they can win without legal intervention. In a follow-up text message after The Indy sought comment for this story, Black said he stood by his previous statement and declined to speak further on the details of the situation.

Black has served on the council for nine years, in part because a legislative change in municipal election dates extended one of his terms from four to five years. The lawsuit argues that time should count toward the term limit, as the mayor "serves as a member of the City Council and presides over its meetings," quoting North Las Vegas' city charter. 

This isn't the first lawsuit focused on whether term limits apply to a candidate who has not reached the limit, but would exceed it if they serve a full term.

But experts and lawmakers say they were surprised to see the lawsuit against Black, given unfavorable lower court decisions and past elected officials in similar circumstances serving beyond 12 years.

"I just thought it was odd," former Nevada System of Higher Education Regent Laura Perkins said about the suit. Perkins is the Nevada representative for U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit that advocates for term limits across the United States. "We've already set precedent. It's like beating a dead horse." 

Outgoing North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, who will have served 13 years between stints on the council and as mayor, had her situation covered by the media in 2022, but no lawsuit challenging her candidacy was filed and she was elected to a four-year term. 

That same year in Reno, a district court judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging mayoral candidate and City Councilwoman Jenny Brekhus, saying she was allowed to run even though winning the race and serving the full term would take her over 12 years on the same board. 

A late state Supreme Court decision rendered that decision moot after Brekhus and William Mantle, the plaintiff in the case and a fellow mayoral candidate, lost in the primary. 

In an emailed statement to The Nevada Independent, City of North Las Vegas spokesperson Kathleen Richards pointed to Brekhus' case and Goynes-Brown's tenure as precedent. Richards said the state Constitution clearly applies to candidates that had served in "office for 12 years or more" and that "it is not a cap on combined or future service." 

Local officials serve four-year terms, but a 2019 bill that shifted municipal elections from odd to even-numbered years required some elected officials to serve extended terms to match up with the new election schedule. 

The change prevented former Henderson Mayor Debra March from running for re-election (which she would have been able to do under the old calendar) and kept former Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman in office for an additional 18 months. 

In a 2015 advisory opinion, the secretary of state's office wrote that candidates seeking another term that would put them over 12 years of service in a single office are "not prohibited from running for and being elected to an additional term of that office, even though the elected public officer will serve in excess of 12 years by the expiration of the final term."

Black was serving on the North Las Vegas City Council when the 2019 bill shifting election years for municipal races was passed — giving him an extended period of time in office.

"He didn't get elected to a five-year term. He only got elected to a four-year term," Perkins said. "The [Legislature] gave him a year."

Term limits in Nevada 

Legal challenges have swirled around Nevada's term limit law — even before it was passed. 

In 1994, voters overwhelmingly approved two ballot questions — one creating term limits for federal representatives, and the other asking if there should be term limits for "state and local public officers." 

But before the 1996 vote, two major legal developments happened. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 rejected state-level term limits for members of Congress, spiking that ballot question in Nevada. 

And separately, the Nevada Judges Association in 1994 filed a lawsuit seeking to split the other ballot question in two. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed, and ordered the question to be split, one related to state and local public officers and the other one related to "justices and judges." On the 1996 ballot, the former passed while the latter did not. 

Still, the lawsuits continued. 

In 2008, another state Supreme Court decision settled a question as to when the rule kicked in for those elected prior to ratification of the 1996 amendment. 

In 2012, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that district attorneys and sheriffs were not subject to the term limits as they were considered county officers, distinct from "state" or "local public officers." 

Two years later, the court prohibited Reno Councilmembers Jessica Sferrazza and Dwight Dortch from running for mayor, finding that they had already reached their term limit on the council as the positions of mayor and councilmember were equivalent.

In 2022, Brekhus was sued by a rival mayoral candidate over term limits, even as incumbent Mayor Hillary Schieve was running for re-election that would bring her to 14 years served on the council. 

In an interview, Brekhus said she feels for Black — she said the lawsuit made running her campaign extremely difficult. 

"It was highly unusual to me, and likely politically motivated, to attack my candidacy and not [Schieve's] candidacy," Brekhus said, adding she would not have filed to run for mayor if she didn't think she was allowed to run, nor did she set out to make a Supreme Court precedent. "I didn't want to make a new law." 

It was part of the reason Brekhus didn't appeal the court's 2022 decision finding her case moot, though she said it left a legal gray area open for a lawsuit against Black. 

As to why the term limit uncertainties hadn't been resolved earlier, she said the Legislature is too concerned with state issues to be able to focus on the local level. And changing the constitutional language is a laborious process — a bill would have to pass both houses of the Legislature twice and then be approved by voters, or get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and then pass twice in subsequent elections.

Perkins, who spent seven years on the Board of Regents, agreed that the Legislature should have tackled the issue. 

"I believe it should have been fixed in previous legislative sessions, but nobody wanted to reopen that can of worms because it was such a contentious issue," Perkins said. 

Black's case could set a precedent for other local government officials set to be affected if they run for three terms. In Las Vegas, council members Brian Knudsen and Olivia Diaz got an 18-month extension as did Henderson council member Dan Stewart. The issue was not brought up for County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick, who was appointed to the commission in 2015 — she will end up serving 14 years due to the extension and her appointment. In North Las Vegas, council members Isaac Barron and Richard Cherchio will also serve more than 13 years.

One size fits all? 

On the local level, where city councils and county commission members work full-time and serve continuously throughout the year, term limits are less of a hindrance than in the state's part-time Legislature. 

However, that doesn't mean there's no grumbling. In a farewell state of the city speech last week, Goynes-Brown told the crowd that she wished she "had more time." 

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom (D) said he felt that 12 years was plenty of time to accomplish significant political goals on the local level — he said he liked the idea of having some "fresh blood" every once in awhile. For the Legislature, Segerblom said the issue was completely different. 

"We've never really recovered from that," the former state senator said on legislative term limits, saying the laws, along with a '90s-era constitutional requirement requiring a two-thirds vote to increase taxes, had completely "emasculated" the legislative branch.

For UNLV history professor Michael Green, Black's case is ironic.

"How did he wind up serving nine years? The answer is in the midst of his service, we changed the dates of municipal elections," Green said. "You are penalizing Scott Black by keeping him from serving another four-year term, a legal act, because of another legislative action, changing the election date."