Nevada Legislature convenes to draw new political maps

CARSON CITY – The Nevada Legislature convened its 33rd special session Friday to take up the census-driven redrawing of state election districts, introducing two bills that lawmakers will vote on in the coming days to set district boundaries for the next decade.

Introduced Friday, Senate Bill 1 will set new boundaries for the state’s four Congressional districts, 21 state Senate districts and 42 Assembly districts. Assembly Bill 1 covers the 13 districts for the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents.

AB1 also includes a one-time change to the 2022 filing deadline for judicial candidates, moving the deadline from January to March due to the pandemic-caused delay in the redistricting process.

That delay, on completing the census, is also why the Legislature is taking up redistricting now in special session instead of during its regular session last spring.

Besides introducing the redistricting bills, both houses Friday established special committees to consider the legislation; the two panels are meeting jointly to expedite the hearing process. The joint committees heard AB1 late Friday afternoon but took no action. They will reconvene Saturday morning to hear the Senate bill.

Democrats, who hold majorities in both houses, have the clear advantage in redrawing the lines, with redistricting legislation requiring only simple majorities in each house to pass. Gov. Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat, is likely to approve whatever the Legislature sends him.

The Democratic legislative leadership submitted the majority’s proposed plans Monday. The GOP minority answered them late Friday with their own proposal. Both, as well as others from third parties, are available for review on the legislature’s redistricting website.

The new census showed that Nevada’s population grew by 15 percent over the last decade, becoming more urban and more racially and ethnically diverse.

Given rules on how long pending legislation must “age” before coming to a vote in each house, the session is likely to last into early next week.

The session is a study in contradiction: lawmakers have only two fairly arcane bills to consider, but they are momentous pieces of legislation that will determine how voters go to the polls in congressional and state elections for the coming decade. As legislative action for the day wound down Friday, news broke that Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson had been nominated by President Joe Biden to become U.S. attorney for Nevada.

Also Friday, a federal judge in Reno dismissed a legal challenge to the pandemic-related closing of the legislative building to lobbyists and the public at large for the first part of the 2021 session. The judge sided with legislative staff named as defendants who argued that the challenge became moot after the building reopened, following the vaccination of lawmakers, staff and others.

U.S. District Court Judge Mirandu Du called plaintiffs’ arguments “unpersuasive.”

Contact Capital Bureau reporter Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.