Attorney challenging appointed judge in Department 11

An attorney is challenging a judge appointed to the bench last year in the November general election for District Court Department 11.

Gov. Steve Sisolak appointed District Judge Ellie Roohani to the bench in December 2021 after former District Judge Betsy Gonzalez stepped down.

Attorney Anna Albertson will appear on the ballot against Roohani. Albertson’s law firm primarily handles civil litigation , but she occasionally helps with criminal cases as well, she said.

Albertson, 43, graduated from University of Tulsa College of Law in 2005. She said she has spent her career practicing in District Court and specializing in civil law.

“I think you’ll be hard pressed to find somebody with more experience or more background in this specific court than me,” she said.

If elected, Albertson said she wants to focus on decreasing the current backlog of civil cases in District Court, caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roohani currently handles a mixed civil and criminal calendar in Department 11, although the chief judge has the final say on each department’s calendar. She said her background as a federal prosecutor working on criminal cases also gave her experience in civil law.

“The types of cases that I worked on always had a civil component,” she said.

Roohani, 39, graduated from Boyd Law School in 2010 and joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 2016 as a federal prosecutor, which included handling cases involving sex crimes against children. Roohani was one of three candidates for the bench that were recommended to Sisolak by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Selection.

Albertson became a court appointed arbitrator in 2014, and served as a truancy court judge from 2015 to 2017. She was also appointed to judge pro tem in 2018, overseeing civil cases and trials.

If elected, Albertson said it would be important for her to justly enforce the law to combat racial and economic disparities in the court system.

“We really need fairness for everybody in our court system,” she said. “That’s everybody up to the big corporations, all the way down to the pro bono or even self-represented person.”

Both Roohani and Albertson said they would not legislate from the bench. Roohani said she believes in making judicial decisions that are “faithful to the laws as they’ve been written.”

Roohani is the first judge in Nevada to practice the Baha’i religion. She said her career has been influenced by her desire to give back to Las Vegas. When Roohani was a baby, her parents moved to Nevada fleeing religious persecution in Iran, she said.

“This is not a political ploy for me,” Roohani said about running for judge. “This is where my heart is, and this is my true act of service.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.