Updated on January 12, 2026
The Clark County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on Jan. 6, 2026, to appeal a federal court order that suspended enforcement of the county’s short-term rental ordinance. Before the injunction, county officials had imposed daily fines of up to $10,000 and recorded tens of thousands of dollars in liens against unlicensed operators, despite not providing a functional system for hosts to apply for licenses.
The order being appealed is a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Miranda Du on Dec. 17, 2025. The injunction bars Clark County from enforcing its short-term rental licensing requirement and related penalties, including declaring properties public nuisances, issuing daily fines, and recording liens against homes.
A preliminary injunction is a temporary court order meant to prevent potential harm while a lawsuit is pending in court. In this case, Judge Du did not issue a final ruling on whether Clark County’s ordinance is constitutional. Instead, she found that homeowners challenging the law are likely to win their case and that allowing the county to continue enforcing the ordinance in the meantime would cause serious and irreparable harm.
In one example cited by the court, Clark County officials fined a short-term rental owner $4,200 for advertising without a license and later recorded a special assessment lien exceeding $85,000 against the property, according to a sworn declaration by Jacqueline Flores, President of the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association.
Judge Du also found that Clark County is likely violating homeowners’ procedural due process rights by imposing penalties without providing what she described as a “meaningful” or functional path to obtain a license. The court noted that the county’s application portal has been inoperable for over two years, creating a backlog of several hundred unprocessed applications.
Despite those findings, county staff told commissioners that the Clark County District Attorney’s Office believes the ruling was issued “in error” and requested authority to appeal the injunction to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Until the higher court hears the county’s appeal, the injunction will remain in place.
The December ruling built on an earlier Aug. 28, 2025, decision in the same case, when Judge Du blocked Clark County from enforcing so-called “platform provisions” of its ordinance. Those provisions would have required booking sites such as Airbnb and Vrbo to verify that listings held valid county licenses and to deactivate unlicensed properties. In that earlier order, the court concluded the requirements were likely preempted by the Communications Decency Act because they imposed “a duty to monitor third-party content.”
The lawsuit was brought by the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association, individual homeowners, and Airbnb. In a statement following the December ruling, Jacqueline said the decision “sends a strong message that local governments cannot take away fundamental property rights through broken systems and punitive enforcement. We are encouraged by the Court’s findings and will continue fighting to protect homeowners from unconstitutional overreach by County Commissioners.”
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