A career Clark County public defender is squaring off against a sitting district judge in a November race that's turned into a debate over whether artificial intelligence is clogging Nevada's courts. Alex Hubert, who has spent almost two decades as a deputy public defender, is challenging Judge Tara Clark Newberry for the Department 21 seat, and the two disagree sharply on what's driving a surge in civil filings — and on how a judge should run a courtroom.
The matchup, first detailed by Nevada Current, pits a well-funded incumbent against a challenger running on a shoestring. Newberry has raised just under $390,000 for her reelection bid, according to the outlet's reporting, roughly ten times what she raised in her first campaign. Hubert, by contrast, has raised just under $13,000 and has just under $7,000 on hand, per the same report.
Because only the two of them filed for Department 21, Nevada's nonpartisan primary rules kicked in and canceled the June 9 primary altogether, sending both candidates straight to the November 3 general election ballot, according to Ballotpedia. The seat is one of nine Clark County district court departments drawing a contested challenge this cycle, in an election where voters statewide will decide 31 percent of Nevada's district court bench, per the Associated Press, as carried by KVUE.
A Judge With a Winding Path to the Bench
Newberry was admitted to the Nevada bar in 2007 and worked as a civil attorney, representing both plaintiffs and defendants before the Nevada Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Nevada Current report states. Before that, she spent eight years as a police officer and worked in disability services at the University of Cincinnati, and she earned her law degree at California Western School of Law.
She won her first judicial election in 2020, but the path wasn't smooth — the report notes she actually finished second to attorney Jacob Reynolds in that year's primary before rallying to win the general election outright. Ballotpedia's records show she secured 51.2% of the vote, or 377,337 votes, against Reynolds that November. Her career also carries historic weight: upon taking the bench, she became the first openly LGBTQ judge elected to Clark County District Court, following an earlier milestone as the first openly LGBTQ police officer in the Cincinnati Police Department, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Newberry was named presiding judge over civil cases in 2022 and has since formed a medical malpractice court, per the Nevada Current account. Though she's the Civil Division's presiding judge, Department 21 itself runs a split docket handling both criminal and civil trial stacks, according to the Eighth Judicial District Court. She expanded her administrative footprint further in February 2026 by taking over the court's monthly Civil Bench-Bar meetings, the court's records show.
The AI Argument at the Center of the Race
Newberry attributes the past three years' jump in civil caseloads in part to artificial intelligence, and the numbers back up the trend she's pointing to: Clark County's civil caseload climbed from roughly 21,000 cases in 2023 to more than 25,000 in 2025, and it's projected to top even that level in 2026, per the Nevada Current reporting. She has said ethical use of AI can increase productivity, but she and others have flagged a darker side — U.S. courts nationwide are receiving briefs authored by ChatGPT and other platforms, some containing erroneous interpretations, botched facts, and even fake legal citations, particularly from pro se litigants representing themselves.
Hubert sees the caseload strain differently, describing Newberry's approach to justice as heavy-handed rather than pointing to AI as the culprit. He's spent nearly 20 years as a Clark County public defender, work he's said is closer to social work than law — about 85% social work and 15% law, in his telling, according to the Nevada Current article. He has said public defenders spend much of their time addressing clients' mental health issues and addictions and connecting them with help, and he's pointed to funding problems plaguing Clark County's diversion programs as part of the broader picture.
Different Résumés, Different Bases of Support
Hubert's legal path took him from Los Angeles, where he grew up, to Arizona State University for his law degree and the Arizona bar exam, before he moved to Las Vegas and volunteered at a civil law firm there. His experience is primarily in criminal law, and he's said that if elected, he would strive for neutrality on the bench.
The two candidates have built very different coalitions of labor and community support. Newberry has picked up endorsements from the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union, the Clark County Marshals, Ironworkers Local 433, SEIU Nevada, and Laborers 872, per the Nevada Current report. Hubert has been endorsed by IATSE Local 720, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Veterans in Politics International, the AFL-CIO, Teamsters Local 631, Culinary Local 226, and Hispanics in Politics, according to the same account.
Newberry's Record Under Review
Newberry earned a 68% retention rating in the Las Vegas Review-Journal's 2025 Judging the Judges evaluation, the Nevada Current report notes. Separately, judicial monitoring database Our Nevada Judges puts her appellate error rate at 33.33% across 126 appealed civil decisions and 12.77% across 416 appealed criminal decisions as of 2026 — figures that track how often a trial judge's rulings get reversed or vacated on appeal.
Newberry's courtroom management has drawn scrutiny in a high-profile way this year. In June, she ordered a new trial in a civil product-liability lawsuit against General Motors tied to a crash involving seatbelt performance, and she barred GM's lead attorney from addressing the jury after finding repeated violations of her evidentiary orders — a case Hoodline covered in detail this summer, as first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Eighth Judicial District Court, where Department 21 sits, is Nevada's largest general-jurisdiction trial court, with 58 elected judges — 32 in civil and criminal departments and 26 in family and juvenile departments — overseeing more than 90,000 cases filed annually, according to court records. The court also saw a leadership change this year when Chief Judge Jerry Wiese, who had originally named Newberry as civil presiding judge, handed the court's top administrative post to Chief Judge Tierra Jones in July.
Voters will decide the Department 21 race on November 3, when Newberry and Hubert face off head-to-head after the June primary was scrapped for lack of a third candidate.
