KVIG Informative

Nevada declared it the public policy of the state in 1961 to let every person seek housing without discrimination, then spent the next sixteen years deciding how, or whether, to enforce that policy. The gap between a declared right and an enforceable one is still the same gap a Las Vegas renter or home buyer has to navigate today when a landlord or seller says no.

Nevada’s Legislature created the Nevada Equal Rights Commission in 1961, assigning it five members appointed by the governor, according to the official text of Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 233 published by the Nevada Legislature. The same 1961 law declared it the public policy of the state to protect the right of all Nevadans to seek housing, employment and public accommodations without discrimination based on race, religion, color, national origin and other categories, according to the same statute.

The 1961 law that created the commission did not come paired with a dedicated housing-discrimination statute for the commission to enforce. Nevada did not enact the law now known as the Nevada Fair Housing Law, codified as NRS Chapter 118, until a full decade later, in 1971, according to the Nevada Legislature’s own published citation history for that chapter.

The 1971 Nevada Fair Housing Law prohibited landlords and property owners from refusing to sell or rent housing, discriminating in the terms of a sale or rental, publishing discriminatory advertisements, or misrepresenting whether a unit was available, based on a person’s race, color, religion, national origin or other protected characteristics, according to the statute’s current text. It also barred blockbusting — inducing property sales or rentals by suggesting a neighborhood’s racial or demographic makeup was changing.

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Even after the 1971 law existed, the Nevada Equal Rights Commission did not receive its own express statutory power to investigate a housing discrimination complaint until 1977, when the Legislature added that authority under NRS 233.150, according to the same published statutory history. The same section also gave the commission authority to investigate employment and public-accommodations complaints, mediate disputes, issue subpoenas and adopt regulations, the statute states.

Lawmakers amended the Nevada Fair Housing Law again in 1991 to add protections based on disability, and again in 2011 to add protections based on sexual orientation, according to the Nevada Legislature’s published citation history for the chapter. The same five-member commission the Legislature created in 1961, still appointed by the governor, remains the state agency charged with enforcing all of it today.

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The five-member commission Nevada created in 1961 is still the same body a Las Vegas renter has to file a complaint with today if a landlord turns them away. The sixteen years it took lawmakers to arm that commission with the power to investigate a housing complaint is a reminder that a declared right and an enforceable one are not the same thing, no matter what year a legislature writes the first one down.