An attorney running to unseat a sitting Clark County Family Court judge has been ordered off the November ballot after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that her campaign filing — submitted by email at the direction of an election officer — didn't meet the state's strict filing rules. The decision leaves Judge Michele “Shell” Mercer, who has faced sharp criticism over her 2025 performance evaluation, unopposed for another six-year term in Department Z.
The state's high court issued its order Thursday, directing the Clark County registrar of voters not to place Amber Candelaria's name on the Nov. 3 ballot, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Candelaria is an attorney who says a Clark County Election Department filing officer instructed her to submit her declaration of candidacy by email. That filing officer confirmed and accepted the submission at the time, per the Review-Journal's reporting. The trouble is that email isn't among Nevada's approved filing methods, which under Nevada Administrative Code 293.0604 include in-person delivery, mail, or an approved remote technology system with real-time video verification, as detailed by the Nevada Legislature.
A Novel Legal Fight Over Government Missteps
Mercer challenged Candelaria's filing in district court, but that court denied her challenge, ruling that filing officers had discretion to accept email submissions. Mercer then appealed, and the Nevada Supreme Court heard en banc oral arguments Aug. 6 in Las Vegas, weighing whether local election officers actually possess that kind of administrative discretion, according to Nevada Appellate Courts. The case raised a novel question: whether NRS 293.182, a statute meant to contest candidate qualifications, can be used to disqualify someone for a procedural filing mistake made on the government's own advice.
Candelaria argued she substantially complied with the instructions she was given by election officials. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed, ruling in its Aug. 14 order that she was disqualified as a candidate and vacating the district court's decision in Mercer's favor. The court's ruling effectively handed the Department Z race to Mercer, according to the Review-Journal.
A Divided Court
The ruling did not come without dissent. Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon dissented from the disqualification order, writing that the majority excused an egregious error by government actors, per the Review-Journal. Justice Kristina Pickering also dissented from the Aug. 14 order vacating the district court decision, opposing Candelaria's removal without addressing whether her reliance on government filing instructions amounted to substantial compliance, according to Our Nevada Judges.
Candelaria had said she ran to give voters a choice, and her campaign has pointed to her bench experience as a qualification: prior to the 2026 race, she served as a Pro Tem Hearing Master in Clark County Family Court, presiding over more than 3,650 court hearings in temporary judicial capacities, per her campaign's Facebook post.
Mercer's Rocky Performance Review
Mercer won the inaugural election for Department Z in 2020, defeating opponent Romeo R. Perez, when the seat was created as one of six new family court departments meant to address an expanding caseload. She is currently serving a six-year term and did not respond to an interview request from the Review-Journal regarding the case.
Mercer has faced criticism from some lawyers over her time on the bench. In the Review-Journal's 2025 Judicial Performance Evaluation, administered by UNLV's Center for Research, Evaluation and Assessment, Mercer received a 48.1% retention score among surveyed attorneys — one of only two sitting Family Court judges to score below 50%. Some lawyers responding to the evaluation said Mercer should be forced to leave the bench, naming her among five judges who received that criticism. Mercer has said she was disappointed with the rating, noting that her staff was brand new when she took on the role and that she has since implemented procedural safeguards and made course corrections in her department.
Part of a Broader Pattern in Clark County
With Candelaria's removal, Mercer is now the only candidate on the Department Z ballot, meaning voters won't get a choice between candidates for that seat. That outcome fits into a wider trend across Clark County's 2026 election cycle, where 32 District Court seats and 26 Family Court departments were on the ballot and nearly one-third of all judicial contests featured unopposed candidates, according to the Review-Journal. Family Court Department Z sits within Nevada's Eighth Judicial District Court, a trial court originally created by the state legislature in 1929 to serve Clark and Lincoln counties before being redrawn in 1945 to cover Clark County exclusively.
The Department Z dispute echoes tensions Hoodline has previously chronicled in another contested family court race, where questions about judicial conduct and fitness for the bench similarly shaped a Clark County contest. For now, the Department Z seat heads to the Nov. 3 ballot with Mercer's name standing alone.
