Background
Charles Rocha worked for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as a forensic supervisor at a state mental health facility serving criminal defendants. After an altercation with a patient, DHHS terminated him. Rocha requested a hearing before the State Personnel Commission. A hearing officer reinstated Rocha with full back pay, applying a use-of-force standard. DHHS then filed a petition for judicial review (PJR I) in district court, serving only Rocha — not the Attorney General, as required by NRS 233B.130(2)(c)(2). The district court granted PJR I in part and remanded to the hearing officer with instructions to apply a client-abuse standard instead. On remand, the hearing officer affirmed Rocha’s termination. Rocha’s attempt to appeal directly to this court was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, as NRS 233B.150 requires a final district court judgment before an appeal may be filed.
Rocha then filed a second petition for judicial review (PJR II) challenging both the agency’s decision on remand and — newly — the district court’s jurisdiction over PJR I on the ground that DHHS had failed to serve the Attorney General. In PJR II, however, Rocha named only DHHS in the caption — not the Personnel Commission, which was the adjudicating body and a “party of record” to the administrative proceeding under NRS 233B.130(2)(a). DHHS moved twice to dismiss for that omission; the district court denied both motions. More than a year later, Rocha amended PJR II to add the Commission as a respondent. The district court ultimately denied PJR II on the merits, concluding that Rocha’s challenge to PJR I’s jurisdictional defect was “beyond the scope” of its review. Rocha appealed.
The Court’s Holding
A second petition can challenge PJR I’s jurisdiction — but only if PJR II itself is proper. Writing for a unanimous en banc court, Justice Stiglich vacated and remanded with instructions to dismiss. The court first resolved the legal question in Rocha’s favor: under NAPA (NRS Chapter 233B), a party aggrieved by a district court’s non-final remand order in a judicial review proceeding may challenge the district court’s jurisdiction over that first petition in a subsequent petition for judicial review once the remanded proceedings have concluded. NRS 233B.130(6) designates the second petition as the “exclusive means of judicial review” after remand, and subject-matter jurisdiction challenges cannot be waived — they may be raised at any time. The district court was wrong to hold Rocha’s jurisdictional arguments were “beyond the scope” of PJR II.
PJR II was itself jurisdictionally defective. Any consideration of PJR I’s alleged jurisdictional defect, however, required that PJR II itself be properly filed. It was not. NRS 233B.130(2)(a) mandates that a petition for judicial review “[n]ame as respondents the agency and all parties of record to the administrative proceeding.” The Supreme Court has required strict compliance with this provision; failure to name a required party strips the district court of jurisdiction. The Personnel Commission — the quasi-judicial body that heard and decided Rocha’s challenge to his termination — was plainly a party of record. Rocha’s original PJR II named only DHHS, not the Commission. The belated amendment adding the Commission, filed more than a year after the original petition, could not cure the initial jurisdictional defect. Because PJR II was fatally flawed from the start, the district court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate it, and the denial on the merits must be vacated. Remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.
Key Takeaways
- Under NAPA, a party aggrieved by a district court’s remand order in a judicial review proceeding may challenge the district court’s jurisdiction over the first petition in a second petition for judicial review filed after the remanded administrative proceedings conclude; such challenges are not waived and are not beyond the scope of the district court’s review in the second petition.
- NRS 233B.130(2)(a) requires strict compliance: a petition for judicial review must name as respondents both the agency and every party of record to the administrative proceeding from the outset; a later amendment naming an omitted required party cannot cure the original jurisdictional defect.
- The Personnel Commission (or analogous quasi-judicial adjudicating body) is a “party of record” to the administrative proceeding and must be named as a respondent in any petition for judicial review of its decisions; omitting it is a fatal jurisdictional defect regardless of whether the Commission is the nominal “adverse” party.
- Practitioners challenging agency decisions under NAPA should identify every entity that participated as a decision-maker or party in the administrative proceeding and include each in the petition caption and service list from day one.
Why It Matters
Rocha is a cautionary tale about NAPA petition practice that Nevada employment and administrative law practitioners cannot afford to ignore. The court’s dual ruling — that PJR I jurisdictional defects can be raised in PJR II, but only if PJR II is itself properly filed — creates a narrow and demanding path for employees and others who believe an agency remand was issued without jurisdiction. The window is not forgiving: a petition that omits even one required party is void for want of jurisdiction from the moment it is filed, and no amendment can resuscitate it.
The practical checklist for any NAPA petition is now explicit: identify the agency that took the adverse action, identify the adjudicating body (which may be a separate commission, hearing officer panel, or personnel board), identify any other entities that appeared as parties in the administrative record, name them all in the caption, and serve them all within the filing deadline. For state employees whose cases flow through the Personnel Commission, the Commission must always appear as a named respondent alongside DHHS or any other executive agency — even when the Commission ultimately sided with the employee. Practitioners who treat the Commission as a passive background entity and name only the employing agency risk losing jurisdiction before the first argument is made. Rocha makes that risk concrete and irreversible.