Court has no plans to reinstate program that banned people from Las Vegas Strip

Las Vegas Justice Court’s chief judge said the court has no intention of reinstating a controversial court program that banned criminal defendants from the Strip.

Justice of the Peace Melisa De La Garza said she does not expect judges to bring back the Resort Corridor Court, despite the passage of Gov. Joe Lombardo’s crime bill in November. The bill implicitly pushed for the return of the court program by formalizing its legality, but it could not force the judicial branch to reinstate a system in which only one or two judges oversee all cases involving crimes that happen on the Strip.

“The Assembly Bill did authorize us to create the court, but I don’t foresee us bringing that court back in that iteration,” De La Garza told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a recent interview.

The crime bill requires the court to submit yearly data to lawmakers and monthly data to Clark County regarding crimes that occur in the resort corridor. De La Garza said data requirements will be costly, and she anticipates requesting about $400,000 for the court to bolster its IT capabilities and compile the data.

The Resort Corridor Court operated for nearly two years before the majority of the court’s judges elected to end the program in late 2024, the Review-Journal previously reported. The program coincided with judges increasingly issuing “order-out” orders banning people from the Strip, which critics have said were used to target homeless people accused of trespassing.

De La Garza said the Resort Corridor Court had been overwhelmed with the number of arrests coming through the system.

“It was essentially quality-of-life crimes that we were seeing coming through that court,” De La Garza said. “So it was determined that we needed to really focus on the resources and how to deal with those issues, rather than treating this as a true criminal court.”

Although the Resort Corridor Court ended, judges continue to issue order-out orders that ban defendants from the Las Vegas Strip. But without a specific program catering to crimes on the Strip, the overall number of order-out orders decreased in 2025 at the same time violent crimes decreased across the Las Vegas Valley, the Review-Journal previously reported.

Local law enforcement and the gaming industry pushed for the creation of the Resort Corridor Court as a way to reduce crime on the Strip, and the Nevada Resort Association continues to advocate for its reinstatement.

Trespassing was the most common offense associated with order-out orders when the court program was operational, and few of the defendants banned from the Strip were accused of violent crimes, according to data from Justice Court.

Response from resorts

To comply with data requirements, De La Garza said the court needs Interim Finance Committee approval to obtain money allocated by the crime bill. Justice Court staff are scheduled to testify before the committee during its next meeting on Thursday, she said.

The court also could ask for money from Clark County commissioners to carry out the data requirements.

Instead of reinstating the prior version of the Resort Corridor Court, De La Garza said the court’s goal is to use specialty programs to reduce recidivism and find long-term solutions for defendants who would otherwise be sentenced to jail time. This could include hiring more court staff to identify defendants in need of social services.

“A short-term, 10-day sentence doesn’t help the community in the long run,” De La Garza said. “In fact, it’s a burden to the taxpayers.”

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, which operates the Clark County Detention Center, it costs $325 a day to house an inmate at the jail.

Virginia Valentine, president of the Nevada Resort Association, said in an emailed statement that Las Vegas Justice Court should reconsider reinstating the Resort Corridor Court to its original form.

She said the effectiveness of the court’s current approach — which has no dedicated calendars for cases originating from the Strip — can be assessed through the crime bill’s data reporting requirements.

“It is time to follow the law,” Valentine said in the statement. “This data is essential to understanding what is happening, what is working, and what is not, in addressing chronic offenders moving through the justice system.”

De La Garza said the court has been unable to report data to Clark County since the bill went into effect.

Legislative history

All of the legislative language about the Resort Corridor Court, including the potentially costly data reporting requirements, originates from a last-minute amendment to Gov. Joe Lombardo’s original crime bill that failed during the regular 2025 legislative session.

Sen. Melanie Scheible, D-Las Vegas, testified to an Assembly committee that she worked with the resort association to create the amendment because there were no guidelines in place when the Resort Corridor Court operated.

“That is why I worked with the Nevada Resort Association on this language to respond to requests for the corridor court to be re-established, but to put these guidelines into place so, hopefully, it will be more successful this time,” Scheible testified in June.

The data reporting requirements were not significantly changed for the version of the crime bill passed in the special session. De La Garza said the data requirements came from the resort association, which she said “would not entertain discussions from the courts” about the language.

Valentine said in a statement that the resort association has been pushing for access to data since the Resort Corridor Court was operational.

“When it became clear there was no appetite for data collection and reporting, we worked during the regular legislative session and the special session to include language in the legislation to require it,” Valentine said, adding that the resort association reached out to the Justice Court “offering to collaborate” after the bill was passed.

The Nevada Judges of Limited Jurisdiction raised concerns during the special session about lawmakers mandating that the court report data.

“The judicial branch is then potentially becoming intertwined with the executive or the legislative branch. That’s when we become concerned about the separation of powers,” said Justice of the Peace Jessica Goodey, who represented the Nevada Judges of Limited Jurisdiction during the special session.

De La Garza said the reporting requirements are vague and have led to problems defining what information needs to be collected for lawmakers.

The bill calls for the courts to report the percentage of defendants who “successfully completed the sentence or condition of release,” without defining what it means to successfully complete a sentence. It also requires the court to report the “underlying crime” for defendants charged with crimes in the corridor, without defining the term.

In the Nevada Resort Association’s statement, the organization accused the court of “reluctance to gather standard data.”

”We would love to get to gather this data,” De La Garza said. “We just don’t have the ability. We don’t have the resources, and that is one of the things that we have been working on.”