In another effort to stop $380 million in public funding for a new baseball stadium in Las Vegas, a Nevada teachers union announced new plans for legal action on Tuesday.
The union plans to file a lawsuit that could call into question the viability of A’s owner John Fisher’s plan to move the club into a ballpark on the Las Vegas Strip, but it is not expected to stop MLB owners from voting to approve the Oakland A’s relocation. The owners are meeting in Arlington, Texas and expect to approve the relocation in a unanimous vote Thursday, according to The Athletic.
Without public funding, or with a delay in public funding, Fisher may be forced to find an alternative location.
The teachers’ lawsuit will challenge the language of the bill signed into law by Gov. Joe Lombardo in June, when the state legislature approved the public spending package.
Dawn Etcheverry, an elementary music teacher and the president of the union’s “Schools Over Stadiums” political arm, said in a statement that the bill “violates at least five sections of the state constitution, which should lead to the bill’s partial or total invalidation.”
Alex Marks, a spokesperson for Schools over Stadiums, said the organization believes there needs to be a two-thirds supermajority in both the State Assembly and the State Senate for a bill that creates new taxes in Nevada.
In June, neither the Assembly nor the Senate passed the bill, SB-1, with such a vote supermajority: The Assembly passed it 25-15, and the Senate passed it 13-8.
“There’s some other flat-out unconstitutional language we’re looking into,” Marks said.
If the teachers were able to put a hold on the funding for a new ballpark, it would call into question more than 25% of the overall $1.5 billion cost expected for the A’s to build a domed or retractable-roof stadium on the Vegas strip. There have been no known construction plans yet to be filed for the stadium, expected to open in 2028.
It is still uncertain where the A’s would play until then. According to The Athletic, the A’s and MLB’s relocation committee finalized a proposal for the A’s move and handed the proposal to every owner, but it does not answer the question of where they would play for the final three seasons before the Las Vegas ballpark opens.
The A’s lease at the Coliseum ends after the 2024 season, and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao has said she won’t extend the lease without some guarantee from MLB that Oakland would receive an expansion franchise.
An MLB-driven report about relocation was not confident about Las Vegas’ viability for a team, but the questions are not expected to stop the owners from approving the move, The Athletic reported.
There’s incentive for the owners to move this along; once the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays finalize new stadium deals, MLB plans to expand from 30 to 32 teams, earning the league at least $2.2 billion in fees per expansion team.
The Nevada teachers union is seen as the biggest obstacle remaining for the A’s. The union expects to file its litigation in Nevada District Court “in the coming weeks.”
In a separate effort, the union has also filed a petition for a referendum that would put $120 million of the $380 million package on the ballot next November, giving voters a say in the matter. A’s lobbyists challenged the language of the petition in court last week, when a judge ruled that the petition was not worded correctly and would need to be amended.
The teachers are appealing that ruling and can refile their petition at any time once the language is changed. The petition would require just more than 100,000 verified signatures to get the issue to a ballot.
