Schools Over Stadiums pushes forward despite Nevada Supreme Court ruling on A’s ballpark

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The Nevada Supreme Court upheld the ruling of a lower court Monday and squashed an attempt from Nevada political action committee (PAC) Schools Over Stadiums (SOS) to get a referendum on the ballot for Senate Bill 1 (SB1) this November. SOS hoped to put SB1 to a public vote, as the organization had confidence that Nevada residents would strike down the $380 million in public funding for the A’s proposed Armadillo Dome in Las Vegas. 

On Tuesday afternoon, I spoke with SOS officer Chris Daly — who is also the political director of Nevada State Education Association (NSEA), the teachers’ union behind SOS — to see how the organization took the news.

“We’re disappointed,” Daly told RickeyBlog.com. “I don’t wanna try and sugarcoat it. With that said, when we didn’t get an opinion from the court a week and a half ago, we knew that we had probably gone past the make-or-break point to try and get signatures. … We lost the referendum when the court just slow-rolled the case. That’s pretty frustrating.”

Eventually, SOS just ran out of time.

The appeal was presented on April 9 and SOS was hoping for a quick decision from the court. Even if the judge sided with SOS, they would have been hard-pressed to gather the 102,000+ signatures needed by June 26 to create the referendum. Daly figured the cutoff date to gather signatures was about seven weeks and that deadline passed last week.

“We had filed for an expedited hearing and we had submitted to the court a declaration about the timeframe that was necessary to collect signatures,” Daly said. “They just blew right through that. … Our attorneys are decent attorneys, they’ve been around a long time and been working in Carson City. They were flummoxed at this opinion.”

On the backs of fundraisers based in the Bay Area who support the A’s, SOS raised more than $200,000 for their referendum efforts, according to Daly. But with legal bills stacking up, Daly said that money is already accounted for.

“We’ve raised a couple hundred thousand dollars, which almost covers all of our legal bills,” Daly said. “I can’t say it enough, Oakland fans have been great. A large percentage of the money we’ve raised has been small-dollar contributions from everyday Oakland fans. … Part of the A’s strategy was to run the clock out, part of it was to beat us, part of it was to run up our legal bills. They’ve succeeded on all those fronts.”

SOS is already looking ahead to the 2026 ballot, where they hope to strike down the public funding for SB1 with another referendum. The A’s are still hoping to begin construction on the stadium next year, despite having an unfinalized location on The Tropicana lot and no financial plan. Daly said there are a lot of moving parts and scenarios which could determine SOS’ course of action in the future.

For now, Daly is keeping a sense of optimism despite Monday’s ruling.

“The good news is we’re not dead yet,” Daly said.

NSEA is also behind the PAC called Strong Public Schools Nevada (SPSN) that is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging SB1 on constitutional grounds in five different areas. Ultimately, the organization’s goal is to recoup the public funds and divert them to schools, as Nevada ranked 48th in the National Education Association’s state public school rankings for 2024.

The A’s recently filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit, but SPSN has opposed it. For now, they are waiting for the legal process to shake out and Daly doesn’t have an expected timeline for the lawsuit to move forward.

“We think our case is pretty good,” Daly said. “Apparently the A’s also think our case is pretty good, as they are attempting to intervene in the case. I think the reason why the A’s want to intervene in the case, is because they are concerned about a possible scenario where we win in district court and the state doesn’t appeal. But if they’re intervening, they would obviously appeal any loss as far as it could go. …

“We can’t win on an injunction of release if we can’t show irreparable harm. And we can’t show irreparable harm unless the A’s actually try to do something.”