Candidate for Family Court judge ordered removed from ballot

The Nevada Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a candidate for Clark County Family Court to be removed from the general election ballot, effectively handing the race to incumbent Judge Michele “Shell” Mercer.

The order disqualified attorney Amber Candelaria from running because she declared her candidacy by email rather than by approved methods of submitting notarized documents by mail, in person or virtually using a remote technology system.

Mercer challenged Candelaria’s filing in District Court. When the court denied her challenge, she appealed.

The high court issued an order on Thursday directing the Clark County registrar of voters not to place Candelaria’s name on the Nov. 3 ballot for the Department Z Family Court seat.

Mercer will now be the only candidate on the ballot.

“The real reason why I had been running in this specific seat was to give voters a choice,” said Candelaria. “Now, because I will no longer appear on the ballot, the current sitting Judge Mercer essentially is defaulted into another six-year term without the voters having the opportunity to have any say.”

Candelaria claimed in court that a filing officer for the Clark County Election Department instructed her to email the documents and that the officer then confirmed and accepted her filing.

That argument won support from Chief Justice Douglas Herndon, the sole dissenter from the ruling.

“I believe the majority again excuses an egregious error by government actors that may result in a violation of fundamental fairness,” Herndon wrote in his dissent.

Mercer did not respond to an interview request regarding the case.

In the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s 2025 Judicial Performance Evaluation, Mercer was one of five judges lawyers said should be forced to hang up their robes. Of the lawyers who responded, only 48.1 percent answered “yes” when asked whether Mercer should be retained on the bench.

In a previous interview with the Review-Journal, Mercer said she was disappointed with the rating but added that when she took on the role, her staff was “brand new,” which made navigating the job more difficult.

“Nonetheless, I don’t take it lightly, and I’ve made some good course corrections, and I’ve put in some procedural safeguards in my department,” Mercer said.

Department Z was one of six created in the 2020 election cycle to deal with an expanding caseload. Mercer won the first race for the position and is serving a six-year term.

Contact Kalohe Danbara at kdanbara@reviewjournal.com. Metro intern Sophie Baker contributed to this report.