A Las Vegas attorney said he plans to add hundreds of plaintiffs to his lawsuit agains the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and he asked a judge on Thursday to consider protecting their identities.
“I’ve talked to plaintiffs who are willing to join, but they’re concerned about being doxed,” said attorney Sam Castor, representing three named plaintiffs from throughout the Las Vegas Valley. “I’m just asking for a limited protective order that says that residential names and addresses will not be disclosed in public record.”
At issue in the case is the water authority’s enforcement of a 2021 law that will make it illegal at the beginning of next year to use water from the Colorado River to irrigate “useless grass,” or grass that an expert committee has deemed nonfunctional.
It was another packed courtroom Thursday, when District Judge Anna Albertson called attorneys back to discuss the terms of a limited restraining order that normally can last up to two weeks.
An updated order, which only restricts enforcement of the ban on the properties owned by the three plaintiffs, will stand until the end of March, when the case is due back in court.
Single-family homes in discussion
The protective order proposal for new plaintiffs was news to attorneys Oliver Pancheri and Will Kemp, who denied that the water authority would harass anyone. Water authority spokesman Bronson Mack declined to comment further when reached after the hearing.
“We’ll be reasonable, unless you say, ‘Here’s the phone book, don’t dox any of these people,’” Kemp said. “We can’t do that.”
Castor then responded: “They just admitted they’re going to dox people, your honor. I’m just trying to make it less terrifying for people who are afraid of a powerful, billion-dollar government organization who has power over their water to be a plaintiff in this case.”
Castor himself is the sole plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against the water authority, in which he is challenging the agency’s collection of so-called “excessive use fees” collected from the valley’s largest water users.
The water authority maintains that the ban on nonfunctional turf does not extend to grass in single-family homes, though one of the plaintiffs alleges a strip of grass near the road within her property tract was designated as nonfunctional.
In a motion to dismiss filed Tuesday, water authority attorneys disputed that fact, saying the agency had made no such designation. They also cast doubt on the claims made by the other two plaintiffs — both of whom had received thousands of dollars in water-smart landscape rebates.
“While there can be legitimate debate on the manner in which water is conserved, this is a subject for the Legislature — not plaintiffs that have no injury in fact for the properties that they own,” Kemp wrote in the motion.
Hearing set for March
Albertson said in a previous hearing that she did not want to consider common areas for any restriction of enforcement unless a homeowners association decided to join as a plaintiff.
Castor told the judge he may be adding certain associations to the lawsuit, which would be among what he says are hundreds, if not thousands of Clark County residents who would like to sign on.
An amended complaint, which would include any new plaintiffs, must be filed by March 17, Albertson said. It’s unclear exactly when the judge would decide whether to shield their identities, though she will consider the motion to dismiss during the hearing on March 31.
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.