A law passed in Nevada’s state legislature claims to combat antisemitism, but activists say it just stifles free speech in an effort to protect Israel as the country continues its genocide in Gaza.
Nevada legislators overwhelmingly voted for a bill in the state’s 2025 legislative session that redefined state law for discrimination to include antisemitism, but Nevada adopted a definition for antisemitism that drew concern from members of the Palestinian community and Palestinian Liberation movement.
Senate Bill 179, which was signed into law by Governor Joe Lombardo in June, adopted the heavily-criticized “working definition of antisemitism” published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, into state law as Nevada’s definition of antisemitism.
“In that definition, criticism of the State of Israel would be considered antisemitism,” a member of the Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) said. “So if you are Palestinian, or you have a group that’s aligned with that cause, and you’re saying, ‘Hey, stop bombing Palestine,’ that could then be construed as antisemitism.”
Human Rights Watch and its coalition of over 100 civil organizations also criticized the definition in 2023, when the United Nations was deciding whether to adopt it into their policy. The organization criticized how the definition can be used to “label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism,” according to the article to the UN from the Human Rights Watch website.
Members of the Palestinian community and movement for Palestinian liberation in Nevada also said the adoption of this definition into law is a direct threat to freedom of speech.
“There’s no denying this. It’s to scare, to stifle free speech, and to make people hesitant about speaking out against Israel,” a member of Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation (NPL) said about the bill. “I mean, I only refer to the past 20 months, but it’s been going on for forever that people who speak for Palestine get suspended, get fired, get detained, get deported.”
The members of both NPL and the Las Vegas DSA said that the senate bill’s definition also hurts the cause it claims to be advocating for, because it conflates Judaism with Zionism. When criticism against Israel is treated the same as criticism of the Jewish faith, it spreads antisemitism against all Jewish people.
“The main difference is that this definition of antisemitism isn’t specifically about the Jewish faith,” the member of the Las Vegas DSA said. “It’s about Israel.”
The member of the Las Vegas DSA said their organization reached out to contacts within the Nevada state legislature asking why they supported Senate Bill 179, and “so many of them said that they were afraid of the pro-Israel lobby.”
The IHRA working definition of antisemitism is used by multiple other states in their discrimination law. Multiple organizations that advocate for the definition’s use cite that as of August 2024, 35 other states adopted the working definition into their discrimination laws.
“It’s just not surprising at all that this is a very tactical, very thought out, well-planned effort that the Israeli lobby has,” the member of NPL said. “They get politicians on the local level, all the way up to federal, to the Senate and to the presidency.”
Mark Credico is an independent journalist working in Southern Nevada. He covers subjects including government accountability, homelessness, workers' unions and the environment.
