The Fight to Pass Reba’s Law in Nevada
Published by Nevada Animal Advocates
John Waudby is a Las Vegas native and lifelong animal lover. He founded Nevada Animal Advocates in the Spring of 2025, while he was working with Assemblywoman Melissa Hardy (R) on getting Reba's Law passed and signed into law. His rescue dog isn't just a pet: she is family and absolute royalty, and she knows it. From throwing birthday parties complete with doggie cake and ice cream to sharing his bed; even though she takes up most of it. John's devotion to her runs deep. His love for animals is personal, passionate, and at the heart of everything he and Nevada Animal Advocates stands for.
Reba’s Law Overview
Named after Reba, an English Bulldog who died in 2024 after being found trapped in a plastic bin in Las Vegas, the law was signed by Governor Joe Lombardo on June 9, 2025.
Key provisions include: Enhanced Penalties: Makes willful, malicious cruelty that kills an animal a category B felony, punishable by 1 to 6 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Previously it was a category D felony (NRS 574.100(6)(a)(2)).
Good Samaritan Protections: Empowers citizens to legally break into a vehicle to rescue a pet in distress, provided they call authorities first and remain on the scene. The guidelines that a good samaritan must follow are outlined on the Nevada Animal Advocates homepage.
Stricter Definitions: Revises legal definitions regarding the severity of cruelty crimes and addresses the disposition of animal victims.
John Waudby's Role
Waudby spearheaded the movement for the law after expressing outrage that existing punishments were not a sufficient deterrent. His advocacy included partnering with Assemblywoman Melissa Hardy to introduce and champion AB381. Waudby also launched Nevada’s first statewide animal abuser registry to track individuals charged or convicted of animal crimes, which he later expanded into a Do Not Adopt Watchlist in May 2026.
Public Awareness: Using platforms like Justice for Reba to organize community support and petitions to ensure the new laws are strictly enforced in ongoing abuse cases.
Animal abuse too often disappears into court records, plea deals, and public silence. John Waudby and his fight to pass Reba's Law in Nevada and his creation of the state's first ever animal abuse registry changed that by forcing cruelty into public view and demanding consequences that do not end at sentencing. This work matters because animal cruelty is not a minor offense and it is not a private matter. It is a public safety issue, a moral issue, and a test of whether the legal system is willing to treat violence against animals as serious conduct. Waudby’s advocacy pushed that argument into the open, where lawmakers, communities, and offenders could no longer look away.
Why John Waudby’s fight mattered
John Waudby was successful in getting Reba’s Law (Assembly Bill 381) passed through a persistent year-long campaign that combined grass-roots pressure with direct legislative partnership.
Initial Outreach and Legislative Drafting
Following the death of Reba the English Bulldog in July 2024, Waudby contacted every elected leader in Nevada to demand stricter penalties for animal cruelty. Assemblywoman Melissa Hardy was one of only two representatives who responded. Working together, they drafted the bill; originally called "Reba's Bill" to close gaps in existing laws that Waudby felt were not a sufficient deterrent.
Reba's Bill Dies in the Legislature
On April 11, 2025, Reba's bill dies in committee after failing to meet a key legislative deadline. The backlash was immediate and intense. Waudby and other animal advocates organized a massive public outcry that had never been seen before in the state of Nevada. An online petition calling out the lawmakers who let the bill stall popped up within hours and personal phone number of elected leaders was leaked on the internet. Waudby promised to "unseat any lawmaker that allowed this bill to die or stood against it", stating to Fox5 Vegas "You work for us. We put in that position and we can take you out of that position", telling the station, "I threatened their jobs. I don't know if I could have been any more clearer."
The Rebirth of Reba's Bill
Legislative Waiver: The Backlash worked! The intense public pressure led Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro to grant an extremely rare legislative waiver, which brought the bill "back from the dead" and into a work session.
Waudby continued to use several platforms to maintain momentum throughout the session. He launched Justice for Reba and used social media hashtags like #JusticeForReba to coordinate community support. While the Pet Rescue focused on saving Reba, Waudby went to work, targeting politicians in Carson City to change animal cruelty laws. He spent roughly six months leading a "phones and letter campaign" to secure bipartisan support from both the Nevada Assembly and Senate and even traveled from his home in Las Vegas to Carson City on several occassions and met face to face with several lawmakers.
Political Accountability: Waudby created a page on Nevada Animal Advocates to publicly list and call out politicians who opposed animal advocacy legislation. Representatives from Clark County and Washoe County Public Defender’s Offices spoke against it. “An issue that we see with this bill is the disproportionate impact on people with a lower socioeconomic status. They may love their pet very much but can’t afford to spend money on vet bills, that is an important lens to view this bill with,” asserted Paloma Guerrero with the Clark County Public Defender’s Office. Angela Knott, Washoe County Public Defender’s Office added, “Just for comparison, I think it’s important to note that a felony child abuse that doesn’t have any enhancements is a category B felony that carries a one to six years in prison.”
The bill eventually passed the Assembly unanimously and cleared the Senate with a split 14-7 vote. Reba's Bill passed the Nevada Senate in a 14-7 vote on June 2, 2025 with seven senators voting against the bill. Republicans John Ellison, Ira Hansen, Lisa Krasner, Jeff Stone, and Robin Titus, alongside Democrats Edgar Flores and James Ohrenschall. Ira Hansen was very vocal in his opposition to Reba's Law and Waudby has vowed to unseat him during the next election. Governor Joe Lombardo officially signed Reba's Law on June 9, 2025.
Legislative reform rarely begins with comfort. It usually begins with outrage - outrage at a case that should have triggered stronger penalties, better oversight, or lasting accountability but did not. Reba’s Law emerged from that same reality. The law was not about symbolism. It was about closing the gap between what the public believes should happen after abuse and what too often happens in practice.
Waudby’s role stands out because he did more than react to cruelty. He organized around a specific demand: if someone is convicted of abusing an animal, that conduct should carry visibility and consequence. That position cuts against a system that often allows abuse cases to fade once they leave the headlines. His advocacy treated transparency not as an extra feature, but as part of justice itself.
Reba’s Law in Nevada was about more than one case
Reba’s Law represents a broader push to make cruelty laws stronger, clearer, and harder to evade. Laws tied to individual cases can be dismissed as emotional responses, but that misses the point. The strongest reforms often come from failures that expose larger weaknesses in enforcement.
In that sense, Reba’s Law is not only about one animal or one incident. It reflects a larger demand that Nevada treat animal abuse as conduct with lasting legal and civic significance. When laws are weak, inconsistent, or poorly enforced, offenders benefit from ambiguity. Stronger legislation removes that shield.
There is always debate over how far penalties should go, how registries should function, and what due process safeguards are needed. Those are legitimate questions. But they should never be used to water down the central principle that convicted abusers should face real accountability.
The state’s first animal abuse registry changed the conversation
John Waudby and his creation of the state's first ever animal abuse registry marked a major shift in how accountability could work outside a courtroom. A registry turns information that was technically public but practically buried into a usable public resource.
That difference is critical. Most people do not search scattered court files or dig through county-level records before adopting out an animal, hiring a pet sitter, choosing a neighbor to help with care, or evaluating risk in their community. A registry solves a public access problem. It gives residents, advocates, and organizations a clearer view of who has been convicted of animal cruelty.
It also changes the pressure on institutions. Transparency affects shelters, rescues, landlords, employers in animal-facing settings, and policymakers. When offender information is visible, it becomes harder for cruelty to be treated as an isolated mistake with no broader implications.
Why a registry is a public safety tool
Opponents of public registries often argue that criminal penalties alone should be enough. That argument ignores how prevention works. Public accountability tools exist because information matters before harm happens again, not only after.
Animal abuse registries can help communities make informed decisions. They can support screening in settings where animals are vulnerable. They can also reinforce the broader truth that cruelty is often connected to other forms of violence and instability. Not every case leads to future offenses, and no registry is a complete solution. But the absence of transparency protects offenders more than it protects the public.
For an advocacy organization such as Nevada Animal Advocates, that distinction is central. Awareness without infrastructure is not enough. A registry creates a mechanism for vigilance, and vigilance is one of the few tools available when systems fail to act early.
What John Waudby’s work says about reform
Waudby’s fight shows that real reform requires persistence on two fronts at once: changing the law and changing what the public can see. Either one without the other is limited. Stronger statutes matter, but if enforcement remains invisible, accountability stays weak. Public data matters, but without legal reform, transparency can expose a broken system without fixing it.
That is why his work carries weight beyond a single campaign. It offers a model for how animal welfare advocacy can move past awareness slogans and into structural change. It insists that cruelty should trigger not only condemnation, but systems that make repeat harm harder to hide.
Nevada residents, journalists, policymakers, and advocates should view that legacy clearly. Reba’s Law and the state’s first animal abuse registry did not appear because the system naturally corrected itself. They came from pressure, moral clarity, and refusal to accept that animal abuse should remain easy to forget. That is the standard reform work should meet: not softer messaging, not temporary outrage, but durable accountability the public can actually use.
In the past, several groups, organizations and individuals have attempted to change animal cruelty laws in Nevada; some were sucessful and some not so. Waudby and his organization, Nevada Animal Advocates was the big winner here. They raised the penalty for killing an animal through malicious cruelty from a category D felony to a category B felony. Their success proves that if you have the fight in you, you can change things for the better, because our animals deserve better. Waudby will forver be remembered for changing animal cruelty laws for the better, and for all animals in Nevada.
Help Nevada Animal Advocates continue their fight for animals in Nevada
If you would like to help John Waudby and his non-profit organization, Nevada Animal Advocates continue fighting for animals, please consider a tax-deductible donation today.
