A continued effort by an Uber-backed group to cap attorney’s fees — despite a state Supreme Court ruling against its ballot initiative — is showing up around Nevada in the form of a large-scale advertising campaign.

Digital and billboard advertisements around Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City rail against “greedy lawyers” and “lawsuit abuse,” the subject of a ballot initiative that gained more than 206,000 signatures in 2024.

Nevadans For Fair Recovery, a political action committee that brought the petition initiative to cap attorney fees in civil cases at 20 percent, was behind the ballot effort. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Jan. 27 that the initiative’s description was “misleading and confusing.”

The decision prevented the initiative from going to the Nevada Legislature for consideration during the 2025 session or from going to voters in the 2026 general election. About a week after in early February, the group turned its funding toward a media blitz.

Spokesperson Karen Griffin said the open-ended campaign reflects that the group is “back to square one” after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Griffin said the group will watch how the Legislature takes up the issue, if at all.

“We’re really committed to this issue and committed to continuing to fund it moving forward,” Griffin said. “Because ultimately, the insurance industry is in crisis. It’s at the root of the problem, and we have a system in Nevada that incentivizes and sanctions legal abuse in a lot of ways.”

Nevadans for Fair Recovery argues excessive attorney’s fees from “billboard attorneys” eat into settlements for plaintiffs and drive up the costs of everyday goods, services and insurance rates. The petition’s opponents contend Uber was trying to make it easier for the company, and others like it, to hire expensive defense attorneys to fight lawsuits while limiting citizen’s abilities to find legal representation.

That’s because contingency fees in civil cases — which are currently not capped in most cases — tie the cost of the attorney’s services to the results of the case. Civil plaintiffs’ attorneys say a cap could discourage attorneys from taking smaller cases or force some firms to switch to an hourly rate model.

Reform efforts elsewhere

Nevadans for Fair Recovery’s sole supporter is Uber. The San Francisco-based ridesharing company poured $5 million into the PAC last year, according to campaign finance reports, and the company has seven paid lobbyists registered for this legislative session.

Nevada is not the only state where Uber is pushing insurance and legal reforms. The company launched a million-dollar ad campaign in California, Georgia, Nevada and New York, according to Sacramento-based TV station KTXL.

Attorney Deepak Gupta, who represented Uber Sexual Assault Survivors for Legal Accountability and the Nevada Justice Association, said the campaign likely reflects the company’s broader effort to change legal and insurance laws. He said they believe Uber sees Nevada as “a testing ground” for policy reform.

“It continues to be troubling, because they are pushing a proposal that would be the most extreme limit on access to the civil justice system in the country but attempting to portray it as something very different,” Gupta said. “And it’s no surprise why they’re doing this. It’s been a moment when this company faces thousands of sexual assault claims.”

Justin Watkins, a partner at Battle Born Injury Lawyers and a non-paid lobbyist for the Nevada Justice Association, said he was surprised to see the media campaign.

“I’m confused as to their continuous effort, to be honest with you, to apply pressure to the Legislature to change laws or to complain about laws that they themselves wrote,” Watkins said, referring to ridesharing regulations set in the 2015 legislative session. “I’m up here in Carson City right now, and there is no proposal from Uber or anybody else to change the structure of the laws that they themselves wrote and are complaining about in these media campaigns.”

Nevada Justice Association has 11 paid and 13 non-paid lobbyists registered during this session, legislative reports show.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – We are just over 2 months away from the Real ID deadline.

That is when you’ll need an ID meeting certain requirements to board a flight or get into a federal building.

The Nevada DMV issued some reminders and recommendations for those who still need a Real ID.

To get it you will need to make an appointment with the DMV.

You will need documents proving your identify and social security number, also two documents showing your Nevada address.

Once approved, you’ll get your Real ID by mail in about 10 days.

The DMV says the May 7th deadline is when the new requirements will kick in for flying and entering federal buildings.

You can still get a Real ID after that day passes.

It’s also optional but the DMV says the Real ID will make it easier to fly.

If you don’t have a Real ID, you can use a passport or military ID.

Go to DMV’s website for more information on Nevada Real ID.

Copyright 2025 KVVU. All rights reserved.

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — We have been working to get more information on this story after Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto sounded the alarm about layoffs in the General Services Administration (GSA) in Nevada.

A call to the local GSA office in Las Vegas wasn’t returned on Tuesday — neither were two messages to the GSA’s regional office in San Francisco or the administration’s headquarters in Washington D.C.

We know the GSA acts as the federal government’s purchasing department and landlord, managing five federal courthouses in the state, including two in downtown Las Vegas.

It may have come as a shock to many when Cortez Masto posted on X that President Donald Trump had fired all GSA employees in Nevada. Her post highlighted the duties of the GSA, including building security.

In an interview Tuesday with Channel 13’s Justin Hinton, Cortez Masto said she’s demanding answers.

“As soon as possible, right? Any timeline. I mean, right now, I just want answers. And I’m going to keep asking the questions and demanding a response through the tools that I have so that I have those answers. It’s important that we know what is going on in the state of Nevada,” Cortez Masto told Hinton.

So far, we haven’t received official confirmation from anyone in the GSA or the Trump Administration about the layoffs, but in an email supplied by Cortez Masto’s office, the GSA administrator told employees they will be placed on 90 days of paid leave starting Monday.

The head of the National Federation of Federal Employees estimates about 175,000 federal workers have been laid off or forced into a deferred resignation.

The Office of Personnel Management said there are about 2.3 million federal employees in the workforce.

Channel 13 Senior Political Reporter Steve Sebelius contributed to this report.

Do you have a question about the Nevada Legislature, politics or government? Write to us using the Ask Steve link on our website.