Las Vegas stadium deal hits potential snag after lawsuit from Nevada teachers while, Rob Manfred sends Athletics stern warning amid relocation efforts....

 

    The Oakland Athletics plan to have a stadium in Las Vegas is seeing yet another obstacle, with a group of public educators (Strong Public Schools Nevada) filing a lawsuit against the state of Nevada and Governor Joe Lomardo that questions the legal merits of a bill that was passed to allow funding of the ballpark, per Evan Drellich of The Athletic.

“A teacher-backed political action committee on Monday sued the state and Gov. Joe Lombardo, challenging the legality of the bill that last year granted $380 million in public money to a new Las Vegas stadium for the A’s. The lawsuit, which also names state treasurer Zach Conine, is the second effort aimed at the A’s brought by the Nevada State Education Association, one of Nevada’s teachers’ unions.”

The teachers had lost in court the first time they challenged the bill, referred to as “SB1.” But they're not backing away from the fight, as they found renewed passion to stop the funding for the proposed Athletics stadium in Las Vegas. "Senate Bill 1 is riddled with constitutional violations and our goal is to ensure public funds are not used for a misguided stadium project. We believe SB1 violates five (5) sections of the State Constitution, and those violations should lead to the bill’s invalidation,” wrote the group in a statement on the Schools Over Stadiums website, dated Feb. 5. The Athletics are not expected to play in the new Las Vegas stadium until 2028, with the 2024 being the last year they will be playing at Oakland Coliseum. 

While Rob Manfred sent the Athletics  a stern warning amid relocation efforts "Rob Manfred said the A’s need clarity ‘in the next few months’ as to where they’re playing after this year and prior to their move to Las Vegas. ‘It’s clearly going to be some place in the west.’ Manfred declined to specify how many/which locations remain in consideration,” Drellich wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

The Athletics obviously need a place to play from 2025-2027. But is the move to Las Vegas still guaranteed to happen? After all, some uncertainty has come to fruition over the past few weeks.

Manfred said he’d be “disappointed” if the Athletics’ Las Vegas stadium wasn’t opened in 2028, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN.

“I would be disappointed if we didn’t open that stadium, Opening Day, 2028,” Manfred said.

The A’s are likely still going to move to Las Vegas. Oakland fans have been holding out hope that perhaps the team won’t follow in the Raiders footsteps, but the odds of the A’s staying in Oakland appear to be extremely slim.

The primary question now is this: Where will the Athletics play before moving to Vegas?