Court Opinion

ID: 9797211
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:15:26.952546+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:53:17.023675
License: Public Domain

Cherry, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
While I concur with the majority’s conclusion that the criminal provisions of Nevada’s Clean Indoor Air Act (NCIAA) are unconstitutional, the majority’s equal protection analysis of the civil provisions, concluding that there are rational reasons for allowing different treatment of businesses, misses the mark. In my opinion, even if the criminal provisions are severed, the statute is unconstitutional as it violates equal protection. Therefore, I dissent from the portion of the majority opinion that upholds the statute’s civil provisions.
The NCIAA’s purpose is to protect families and children from secondhand smoke. The NCIAA creates a distinction in treatment based primarily on whether a business holds a restricted or nonrestricted gaming license, but that distinction is arbitrary. Allowing smoking in the gaming areas of nonrestricted gaming licensees but not in restricted gaming licensees’ gaming areas has no rational basis and is contrary to the statute’s purpose.
*526The majority concludes that the exception for smoking in a non-restricted gaming license business is rational because it is limited to its gaming areas, a place where minors are prohibited and adults can avoid. But the majority ignores the reality that the dangers of secondhand smoke are the same whether the smoking is in a nonrestricted or restricted gaming licensee’s business. To me, the exclusion for nonrestricted licensees that allows smoking only in the gaming areas is spurious at best, as the secondhand smoke is not confined within those boundaries merely because the actual smoking occurs only there. The secondhand smoke carries beyond the gaming areas and still impacts families and children that are located beyond those areas. It makes no difference that minors are not permitted in the gaming areas where the smoking is permitted. The mere fact that minors are precluded from inside the gaming areas does not mean that they are not inside nongaming areas, and minors and families are often more likely to be inside a nonrestricted gaming licensee casino than inside a restricted gaming licensee bar or tavern that happens to sell food. Thus, the statute creates an arbitrary distinction that is not rationally related to the purpose of the statute.
Further, the majority attempts to justify its conclusion by determining that gaming is incidental to the business of a restricted gaming licensee’s business, and therefore, a restricted license holder generates less gaming revenue for state economic purposes. Economics does not provide a rational basis for different treatment. First, both types of licensees have gaming and, thus, contribute to the revenues generated by the state from the gaming profits. Second, simply because a nonrestricted gaming licensee may generate more tax revenue from gaming than a restricted gaming licensee does not provide a rational basis for different treatment in the context of protecting families and children, because the secondhand smoke will have the same detrimental effect regardless of the amount of tax revenue generated from the business.
The distinctions that the majority makes for upholding the civil portion of the statute do not bear a rational relation to the statute’s purpose, and the NCIAA is unconstitutional because it violates equal protection. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s decision to uphold the civil enforcement of the NCIAA.