Fight Over A’s Stadium Funding Continues into the Later Innings
(Editor’s Note: The following appeared this summer in Sports Litigation Alert, a subscription-based periodical.)
By Robert J. Romano, JD LLM, St. John’s University, Senior Writer and Jacob Somerville, 3L, Quinnipiac University School of Law
In 2023, the state of Nevada’s Legislature, during its 35th Special Legislative Session, passed Senate Bill No. 1 (S.B.1) authorizing the Clark County Stadium Authority to secure $380 million in public funds to build a Major League Baseball stadium for the benefit and eventual use of the Oakland A’s franchise.[1] Subsequently, an assemblage of teachers and educators, not pleased with public funds being used to finance a stadium for an MLB team whose principle owner is a billionaire,[2] created a political action committee, Schools Over Stadiums (SOS) and filed a petition to place a referendum on the November 2024 general election ballot asking Nevada voters to strike the state’s commitment to finance the stadium. SOS’s position being that the people of Nevada themselves should have a say in whether their tax dollars finance such a project before it becomes law.
In response to SOS’s petition, two lobbyists with alleged ties to the Oakland A’s organization, Danny Thompson and Thomas Morley, on September 26, 2023, filed a lawsuit against SOS claiming multiple legal flaws with its petition to place the stadium referendum on the November ballot. The lobbyists’ complaint alleged that SOS violated the “full-text requirement” mandated by the Nevada Constitution and that its petition’s description of S.B.1’s effects was legally inadequate and misleading since it didn’t include the full text of the law by only including 7 of its 46 sections. In addition, the lobbyists asserted that the ballot petition did not specify where the funding would be coming from and left out an important detail that a portion of the funds were to be generated from within the sports and entertainment improvement districts, not through existing state funds.[3]
After a series of hearings on the matter, both the District Court and Nevada Supreme Court ruled in favor of the lobbyists, finding that SOS’s ballot petition was misleading to readers and, because of the narrow scope of its description, did not meet the “full-text requirement” which is necessary to ensure that signers of the petition are fully informed about the measures in which they are supporting or opposing. But like most sport litigation matters, the story doesn’t end there, and this matter will be going into extra innings. On February 5, 2024, a second political action committee, Strong Public Schools Nevada (SPS), filed a complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief with the First Judicial District Court of Nevada, Carson City requesting, again, that the courts halt the use of public funds being used for the private benefit of building a baseball stadium.
Strong Public Schools Nevada alleges in its complaint that the passing of S.B.1 violates the Nevada Constitution, specifically Article 5, Section 18 which states that “Any legislation that creates, generates, or increases public revenue in any form is subject to a two-thirds legislative supermajority threshold for passage.”[4] Meaning that a bill must be supported by two-thirds of the members of the Nevada State Legislature for it to be law.[5] And, since S.B.1 was enacted during a Special Legislative Session and contains a provision that creates, generates or increases public revenue, it did not receive support from more than two-thirds of the members of the Nevada State Senate and the Nevada State Assembly prior to being signed into law and therefore was enacted unconstitutionally.
But maybe this isn’t a state constitutional issue at all but that of a commonsense issue. The city of Las Vegas, whose NFL’s Allegiant Stadium was supported by $750 million in public monies in 2016 to lure the Raiders from Oakland, is again being asked to “ante up” another $380 million for a baseball field. Any public money used to support this stadium, like the previous NFL project, would divert away monies that could be spent on public education (along with other social welfare concerns) within the state, a detail that is alarming since the state of Nevada currently ranks 48th in per-pupil education funding and 50th in student-to-teacher ratio. But then again both the Raiders and A’s owners wouldn’t be affected by these statistics since they likely send their child(ren) to private school – they can afford it.[6] And since money isn’t an issue, it is time for these billionaire sport franchise owners to stop bilking local taxpayers for millions upon millions of dollars for stadium development and to start using their own money to build these facilities for themselves.
[1] S.B. 1., 35th Special Session Ch. 1 (2023).
[2] John Joseph Fisher is reported to be worth $3.2 billion.
[3] Schools Over Stadiums v. Thompson, No. 87613, 2024, Nev. Unpub. LEXIS 393 at 1 (May 13, 2024).
[4] Strong Public Schools Nevada v. Nevada, Complaint, First Judicial District Court of Nevada (Feb. 5, 2024), at 6
https://www.nsea-nv.org/sites/nsea/files/2024-02/strong-public-schools-complaint.pdf.
[5] The reasoning behind this provision is to “protect taxpayers from new and increased taxes and fees” by allowing citizens to see how their congresspeople voted so they can hold their legislators accountable.
[6] Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis is reported to be worth $2.3 billion.