Waiting on Nevada Appeal Decision

Project Coyote
January 16
UPDATE: A 3-judge panel from the Nevada Supreme Court spent about 45 minutes discussing our appeal with the two attorneys: Jeff Dickerson representing us, and the Deputy Attorney General representing the State. Most of the discussion related to a central issue: Whether the state legislature erred when it passed a law asking the Wildlife Commission to see about trap visitation intervals using the criteria “populated” and “heavily used”. During the subsequent trapping committee hearings hosted by the wildlife commission, it became readily apparent that nobody knew what those two terms meant. (Las Vegas is populated; so is Gabbs, Elko, Tonopah, Silver Springs and what is more heavily used than the big mining operations north of Carlin?) Our argument (among other things) is that the wildlife commission acted in an arbitrary and carpricious manner in deterring to include that only the fringes of Las Vegas and Reno qualified for trapping interval reduction and the rest of the state stayed the same (96 hours). So, bottom line, it is unconstitutional for the legislature to “give away” its legislative authority to make law to an agency. An agency can fact-find with adequate guidance from the legislature but it cannot dream up its own notions about what the legislature failed to adequately specify. Our attorney thought the hearing went well. One of the three judges clearly got this argument, another may have after rendering a hypothetical example. We are now awaiting the court’s decision on our appeal that should be available in a few months.