Nevada is the only U. Strictly regulated brothels operate legally in mainly isolated rural areas, away from the majority of Nevada's population. Prostitution is also illegal in Nevada's capital, Carson City , an independent city. The rest of Nevada's counties are permitted by state law to license brothels, but currently only seven counties have active brothels. As of December , there are 21 brothels in Nevada. Despite there being a legal option, the vast majority of prostitution in Nevada takes place illegally in Reno and Las Vegas.
Brothels have been allowed in Nevada since the middle of the 19th century. In , a law was enacted to require weekly health checks of all prostitutes. In , President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order to suppress prostitution near military bases—affecting the red-light districts of Reno and Las Vegas. When this order was lifted in , Reno officials tried to shut down a brothel as a public nuisance; this action was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court in In , both Reno and Las Vegas had closed their red-light districts as public nuisances, but brothels continued to exist throughout the state.
In , Joe Conforte , owner of a brothel called Mustang Ranch , near Reno , managed to convince county officials to pass an ordinance which would provide for the licensing of brothels and prostitutes, thus avoiding the threat of being closed down as a public nuisance. Officials in Las Vegas, afraid that Conforte would use the same technique to open a brothel nearby, convinced the legislature, in , to pass a law prohibiting the legalization of prostitution in counties with a population above a certain threshold, tailored to apply only to Clark County.
In , county officials in Nye County tried to shut down Walter Plankinton's Chicken Ranch as a public nuisance; brothels did not have to be licensed in that county at the time, and several others were operating.
Plankinton filed suit, claiming that the state law had implicitly removed the assumption that brothels are public nuisances per se. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with this interpretation in , [9] and so the Chicken Ranch was allowed to operate. In another case, brothel owners in Lincoln County protested when the county outlawed prostitution in , having issued licenses for seven years.
