Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not appear on Nevada’s presidential ballot as an independent candidate after reaching an agreement with the state Democrats, who had sued to kick him off the ballot.

Kennedy suspended his campaign for president last week and sought to remove himself from the ballot in swing states — presumably including Nevada — but his campaign missed the deadline to withdraw from the Nevada ballot. That meant the only way for him to stay off the ballot was the ongoing lawsuit brought by the Nevada Democratic Party.

Both sides reached an agreement this week to drop the lawsuit and remove Kennedy from the ballot, said Todd Bice, one of the lawyers representing state Democrats. The agreement was signed Tuesday by former Carson City District Court Judge William Maddox on behalf of Judge James Russell, who presided over the case.

The agreement outlines that Kennedy and his running mate Nicole Shanahan had filed a petition to gain ballot access, that they will now no longer appear on the ballot and that the lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back to court.

“Withdrawing our objections to the petition … was the easiest way to come off the ballot, which is what we wanted,” said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign ballot access attorney.

The Nevada Democratic Party’s lawsuit to kick Kennedy off the ballot argued his affiliation with other political parties violates the state’s legal requirements for independent candidates. At the time of the lawsuit, Kennedy was a registered Democrat in New York (he now has no party affiliation) and is running as a member of a third party in a host of other states.

Hilary Barrett, the executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party, said in a statement that removing Kennedy “from the ballot is the right way to move forward in the state.”

“As we have said repeatedly, every candidate should play by the rules. RFK Jr.’s campaign did not meet the requirements necessary to run as an Independent non-affiliated party candidate in Nevada,” the statement said.

The agreement marks the presumed end to a monthslong, chaotic legal battle surrounding his ballot access in Nevada.

His initial ballot petition was considered invalid for not including a running mate, as required under Nevada law — which his campaign said amounted to corruption because it was operating on faulty advice from the secretary of state’s office — and his campaign is still engaged in a now effectively moot lawsuit related to that decision. Its second petition was rescinded after misspelling “United States” and the third petition gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, which the campaign celebrated as having defeated an “attempt to block ballot access in Nevada.” 

The electoral implications of Kennedy’s removal are not immediately clear. When third party candidates are included, former President Donald Trump’s lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada increases from 1.4 percent to 2.2 percent, according to data from poll aggregator RealClearPolitics. Kennedy has hovered around 5 percent of the Nevada vote share.

An internal campaign memo from Trump’s pollster last week — released after Kennedy endorsed Trump — found that Kennedy supporters supported Trump over Harris in Nevada more than any other swing state. The data, which did not include a source, found 66 percent of Kennedy supporters in Nevada breaking for Trump and 16 percent backing Harris, with the rest undecided.

Kennedy, the environmental lawyer nephew of John F. Kennedy who rose to prominence for promoting anti-vaccine conspiracies during the pandemic, has run a freewheeling independent campaign for president after initially running as a Democrat last year. He made two stops in Las Vegas, one at a February rally and the other at the annual FreedomFest conference, which is billed as the "world's largest gathering of free minds.”

On Tuesday, Trump named Kennedy as a co-chair on his transition team.

Updated on 8/27/24 at 2:51 p.m. to include polling information, at 3:15 p.m. to include a statement from the Nevada Democratic Party and at 4:17 p.m. to add a copy of the agreement.