The Nevada Gaming Control Board, which oversees the Nevada Gaming Control Act, voted unanimously on November 6 in support of a comprehensive regulation amendment designed to safeguard workers from discrimination and harassment. The measure now heads to the Gaming Commission for consideration.
If approved there, the amendment would require any licensed gaming establishment or related business with 15 or more employees to adopt and implement written policies and procedures “prohibiting workplace discrimination or harassment of a person based on the person’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, or national origin, including, without limitation, sexual harassment.”
Gaming Control Board Chairwoman Sandra Douglass Morgan told the Nevada Independent that many companies may already have such policies in place. “It’s just simply time that something like this would be included in the regulations,” Morgan said.
Gaming Control Board members Terry Johnson and Philip Katsaros also pledged their support. “This seems to be nothing more than an extension of something that should have been in there a long time ago,” Katsaros said.
The board began considering a change to the Gaming Commission’s Regulation 5 that would address sexual harassment in May 2018, after the Wall Street Journal published a damning story about actions on the part of Steve Wynn, then chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. Wynn has since resigned.
That particular amendment died without action, but after Governor Steve Sisolak appointed Morgan in January, she brought it back and expanded the scope of offenses that it covers.
Last month gaming regulators moved to ban Wynn from the casino industry, alleging in a complaint that he “is not a person of good character, honesty, and/or integrity.”
