Christopher Peterson, legal director of the ACLU of Nevada, during a news conference at the ACLU of Nevada offices Friday, Jan. 19, 2024. The news conference addressed questions relating to the release of CCSD Police body-worn camera footage depicting a CCSD police officer tackling and kneeling on a Black teen outside a Las Vegas high school last year.
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The Clark County School District does not want to pay the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada the nearly $50,000 in fees and costs the organization said it incurred during its successful legal fight for video and other records from a district police officer’s violent encounter with a group of predominantly Black teens last year outside a Las Vegas school.
The ACLU of Nevada is seeking $48,628.50 in fees, billed at an average rate of about $338 an hour for about 140 hours of work by two staff attorneys, plus $102 in costs, according to a motion filed last month in Clark County District Court.
In a Jan. 30 response, CCSD argued that the civil rights organization, as a party litigant, was not entitled to recover its own attorneys’ fees; and that the ACLU did not “prevail” – even though a judge ordered the district to turn over most of what the ACLU requested.
“It is abundantly clear that ACLU was the requester, ACLU initiated the instant lawsuit, and now ACLU must be precluded from recovering its own fees because there is no genuine obligation to pay attorney fees,” the district said.
The district argued that the ACLU, which is representing two of the teens involved in the incident, did not “prevail” because it received the records in “nothing more than a technical production” after the boys’ parents gave written consent to release the files. It also said the ACLU missed a statutory five-day deadline to file for costs.
If the court did award fees and costs, the district said, they should be a reduced sum to exclude work related to seeking the officer’s internal affairs investigation report, which the court did not order to be released. The district also characterized the legal work as neither difficult nor complex, and the hourly rates as “not reasonable.”
Fees reflect attorneys’ work drafting motions and other papers, appearing in court and meeting with CCSD representatives. Costs are for logistics such as filing papers with the court and courthouse parking. The matter is set for a hearing March 19.
The ACLU requested a raft of records related to the February 2023 after-school incident outside Durango High School. The School District cited statutory provisions, case law and district regulations to justify not releasing the records initially. The district also said the records were part of pending juvenile justice and employment matters.
The ACLU sued CCSD in April, claiming that withholding the records violated state public records law. In December, a Clark County District judge ordered CCSD to release body-worn camera footage of Lt. Jason Elfberg tackling and kneeling on a Black student, the body-worn camera footage from other officers who responded to the scene, the incident report, the citation issued to the student for resisting Elfberg and dispatch notes.
Police had said the incident stemmed from a weapons and fight investigation.
More than two hours of video went public in January. The footage showed the teens complying with officer orders to stay back and trying to defuse the situation, contradicting police accounts that they were aggressive. No weapons were found or student fights depicted in the videos.
CCSDPD did not punish Elfberg for the incident.
Meanwhile, the ACLU continues to press for the release of email communications within the School District on the incident and components of the greater internal affairs file, such as interview transcripts that led to the report. Those matters will also be heard on March 19.
“The public has a significant interest in knowing why Elfberg was not punished and whether CCSD can conduct a proper investigation into allegations of officer misconduct,” the ACLU argued in a separate brief filed this month. “This need for clarity and transparency clearly outweighs CCSD’s interests in hiding officers and organizational wrongdoing.”
