By Michael Phillips | CABayNews
In Clark County Family Court, one judge has been reversed on appeal in 73% of her cases that reached a higher court — the worst record in the entire district.
Another was publicly censured for meddling in a colleague’s case and botching child-support math.
A third oversaw a custody war that ended in a murder–suicide.
Yet all three are still on the bench — and all 26 Family Court judges will face voters in 2026.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal just published its 2025 “Judging the Judges” survey, a biennial report card based on anonymous attorney ratings of how judges perform. Two family-court judges scored below 50% on the core question: should they be retained?
But even this unusually candid look inside one of America’s busiest family courts leaves out the people who live with these rulings: the 70–80% of parents who walk into court without a lawyer.
Californians should be paying attention. Nevada’s data is a warning about problems our own family-court system still refuses to measure.
Three Problem Judges in One Brutal Paragraph
The survey’s most controversial figure is Judge Mary Perry.
Attorneys gave her the lowest retention score in Clark County Family Court: 35% think she should stay on the bench. More damning are the numbers from watchdog site Our Nevada Judges: in 15 Perry decisions reviewed by the Nevada Supreme Court or Court of Appeals, 11 contained reversible error — a 73% error rate on appeal, the worst in the district. That doesn’t mean 73% of her total docket is wrong, but it does mean that when her cases are appealed, higher courts keep finding serious mistakes.
For families, those aren’t abstract statistics. One mother told watchdog group Veterans in Politics International (VIPI):
“I was the DV victim, but Perry yelled at me for crying and threatened to take my kids if I didn’t shut up.”
That’s not just a “temperament issue.” That’s a courtroom where trauma gets weaponized.
Then there’s Judge Michele Mercer, who scored 48% on the retention question. In 2024, she was publicly reprimanded for interfering in another judge’s case and miscalculating child support — an error later corrected on appeal. Lawyers describe her as kind but “unsure of herself,” not the trait you want in someone making irreversible decisions about children.
Judge Bill Henderson barely cleared 50%. His score cratered after he presided over a high-conflict custody case between Dylan Houston and Ashley Prince, a dispute that spiraled into a fatal shooting. Henderson has said the tragedy “keeps [him] up at night,” and attorneys blasted his short temper and judgment.
These are not “close calls.” They are flashing red lights in a system that claims to put children first.
The Top of the Class — Proof Better Judging Is Possible
The same survey shows what competent, stable judging can look like.
- Judge Adriana Rincon White, appointed in 2025 by Gov. Joe Lombardo, earned a 98% retention score. After years as a hearing master, she’s known for emphasizing “civility, dignity and respect,” and for trying to “be part of the solution” in high-conflict cases.
- Judge Bryce Duckworth, a 17-year veteran, scored 97% and is praised as a “calming influence” in emotionally charged hearings.
The gap from 35% to 98% performance inside one courthouse is staggering. It proves the problem isn’t “the system” in some abstract sense. It’s specific judges, with specific patterns, whom voters could remove — if they had the right information.
The People Nobody Asked: Self-Represented Parents
There is one giant blind spot in the Review-Journal’s otherwise useful project: litigants themselves are never surveyed.
The Judicial Performance Evaluation is built entirely on feedback from roughly 300 lawyers. That might work for business litigation. In family court, it guarantees skew.
In both Nevada and California, most family-law parties are self-represented — often 70–80% in custody, visitation, and support cases. They’re the ones:
- Waiting months or years for a hearing,
- Losing parenting time because they missed a procedural technicality,
- Being told to “calm down” while reliving domestic violence in open court.
They never see a survey. Instead, their experiences show up in:
- Affidavits collected by groups like VIPI,
- Social-media videos from parents sobbing in parking lots,
- Occasional testimony at legislative hearings.
That’s not a feedback loop. That’s a pressure vent.
If you only ask insiders how the court is doing, you will always be told the system is “mostly fine, with a few bad apples.” Ordinary parents know better.
Transparency vs. Privacy: Nevada’s Crossroads
At the same time Nevada is finally publishing hard numbers on judicial performance, it’s also making it easier to shut the doors.
In 2025, lawmakers passed SB 432, a family-court privacy bill that:
- Makes family proceedings presumptively open,
- But gives judges broad discretion to close hearings or seal parts of the record for “compelling” privacy reasons, and
- Increases misdemeanor exposure in certain cases involving the sharing of other people’s sensitive information.
Supporters say it protects children and victims. Press-freedom and civil-rights advocates warn it will quietly normalize closed courtrooms, sealed transcripts, and gag-style orders that make it harder to expose patterns of bias or abuse.
At the same time, Nevada’s judiciary has been piloting Informal Family Trials — simplified, less adversarial proceedings that early reports say move faster and are easier for self-represented parents to navigate. If paired with real oversight, that’s promising.
The question is which direction will win: more sunlight, or more discretion behind closed doors.
California has the same tension. Dependency and custody proceedings are often sealed or functionally invisible. Complaints about rubber-stamp restraining orders, cookie-cutter custody findings, and lack of meaningful appellate review are growing. But because very little is public and almost nothing is measured, there is no Nevada-style reckoning.
A Center-Right Fix List: What Lawmakers Could Do Tomorrow
If you’re center-right — pro-family, skeptical of bureaucratic power, and tired of watching courts destroy parents — the answer isn’t to blow up the judiciary. It’s to force basic accountability with simple, measurable reforms.
Here’s a three-point agenda Nevada and California could adopt right now:
1. Publish every judge’s reversal rate annually
Nevada has already shown the way by partnering the press with public appellate data. Do it statewide and permanent:
- Every year, publish reversal and remand rates for each family-court judge.
- Break it down by case type (custody, support, DV, CPS).
- Flag judges whose error rates are outliers and trigger automatic review.
No spin. No paywall. Just numbers.
2. Require exit surveys for self-represented litigants
If pro se parties are the majority, they should be the backbone of performance data.
Every family courthouse should use a five-question exit survey at the clerk’s window or on a tablet:
- Were you treated with respect?
- Did you understand what the judge decided?
- Did you feel the judge was fair?
- Did you feel safe in the courtroom?
- Do you need information on appeals or modification?
Aggregate the results and publish them by judge. Combine that with attorney surveys and appellate data, and you finally have a three-dimensional picture.
3. Ban blanket closures — courts stay open unless there’s a real risk to a child
We can protect kids and protect accountability.
- Make family-court hearings open by default.
- Allow closures only when a judge makes specific, written findings that a child’s identity or safety would be harmed.
- Track and publish how often each judge closes a courtroom or seals a record.
Privacy should shield children — not judges.
Why This Matters for California
It’s easy for California officials to shrug and say, “That’s Las Vegas.”
But the ingredients are identical here:
- Overloaded dockets,
- High numbers of self-represented parents,
- Enormous judicial discretion,
- Almost no public data on who gets reversed, who gets sanctioned, and who gets quietly “counseled” and left in place.
Nevada has at least started to put numbers on the table. California hasn’t.
We don’t need another blue-ribbon commission to “study” family court.
We need Nevada’s playbook: sunlight on reversal rates, surveys that include parents, and courtrooms that stay open unless there’s a damn good reason to lock the doors.
California Bay News 
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