John Vellardita, right, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, talks with attorney Bradley Schrager following a hearing at the Regional Justice Center in downtown Las Vegas Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023. District Court Judge Crystal Eller issued a strike injunction against the teachers union.
Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County Education Association is no longer under the court-issued injunction that halted last fall’s teacher strike.
Clark County District Judge Jessica Peterson dissolved the preliminary injunction Tuesday, confirming what she said she was likely to do if the Nevada Supreme Court allowed her to reconsider.
CCEA sought to have the injunction lifted in February, saying that circumstances had changed since illegal rolling sickouts roiled the district last fall amid bitter contract negotiations with the Clark County School District.
But because CCEA had appealed the legality of the injunction immediately after it was issued in September, the union first needed to ask the high court to remand the injunction to the district court — or send it back —for the limited purposes of potentially dissolving it before Peterson could grant the union’s motion. The union secured the remand earlier this month.
Injunctions, the union argued, are to address ongoing or impending actions, not to be a permanent state.
“No recent, identifiable conduct previously enjoined has been brought to the court’s attention, and the close of arbitration proceedings between the parties culminating in a new collective bargaining agreement supports a finding that the preliminary injunction is no longer required or equitably maintained,” the order dissolving the injunction said.
A judge filling in for Peterson issued the injunction to halt the sickouts that caused eight schools to cancel one day of school each and disrupted classes at additional schools over the first two weeks of September.
An arbitrator accepted a compromise presented by CCSD and CCEA in December. Teachers will receive significant pay raises under the new agreement, which is good through 2025.
Getting the injunction dissolved does not make the appeal moot.
CCEA’s lawyers characterized their dissolution request as procedural and argued that removing the injunction would have no bearing on the substance of the related appeal, as the appeal, which remains pending, questions whether the injunction was “lawfully issued” in the first place. The appeal has not yet been scheduled for a hearing, according to the Supreme Court’s online docket.
The union has also filed a court motion to have Nevada’s anti-strike statute voided and launched a petition drive to put the ability for public school teachers to strike on a ballot.
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