Their badge numbers were already public, the court found - so no privacy claim survived
A Nevada police union tried to shield officers' names from a civilian oversight board. The state's highest court said no.
The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Citizen Review Board can publish officer names and badge numbers on its meeting notices, agendas, and findings.
The board, created by state lawmakers in 1999, reviews internal affairs investigations and public complaints against officers.
The Las Vegas Police Protective Association had sued on behalf of its members, including seven named officers, to stop the board from listing that information. The union argued that closed-meeting rules, personnel-file confidentiality, and its collective bargaining agreement with the department all pointed toward keeping officer identities private.
The court disagreed on every count. Under Nevada's Open Meeting Law, a public body must name on its agenda the person whose "character, alleged misconduct, or professional competence" will be considered when part of a meeting is closed for that purpose. The board's meetings on officer conduct are closed by statute - and that closure is exactly what triggers the duty to name the officer. The two rules work together, the court said, not against each other.
The union's contract arguments fared no better. The court found nothing in the bargaining agreement that gave officers a right to anonymity in the board's proceedings. Provisions about purging personnel files governed how the department handles its own records, not how the review board runs its meetings. And because the board is a separate entity that never signed the contract, the agreement could not override the disclosure duties the Open Meeting Law placed on it.
The union also claimed officers had a privacy interest in their names and badge numbers strong enough to block disclosure. The court rejected that too. Department policy already requires officers to give their name and badge number when dealing with the public, and the department had released the same details in response to public records requests before. Because the information was already public, the court held, the officers could not show the kind of privacy interest the law protects.
The union warned that published allegations of misconduct would be "memorialized, in perpetuity, on the internet" and could damage reputations if claims proved unfounded. The court acknowledged the concern but found the officers had not explained how that harm could flow from disclosure when their names and badge numbers were already public.
The ruling turned on the pleadings alone, with no trial or fact-finding.
