Erica Roth, a civil rights attorney now running for Assembly seat District 24, traces back her willingness to serve in elected office to help she gave as a public defender to a now incarcerated man.
“He was somebody who had been in and out of the system for a long time, and he had picked up a misdemeanor case, something minor along the lines of breaking into a building, trying to find a place to sleep, things like that,” she explained.
“And we started a years long relationship together. And during those years, he came back again and again for these similar crimes. He was experiencing chronic homelessness. He did not have the resources or services that he needed.”
As she advanced in her career, and started doing felony work, he ended up as a client in a more serious case. Roth tried to convey to the judge what her client had been through.
“I said, ‘Judge, I want you to imagine what it's like every night to lay your head down onto concrete and to not believe that you have anyone in this world or anyone to take care of you.’”
Roth says despite her efforts her client was given a lengthy prison sentence. She felt devastated, watching a “slow motion tragedy.” The man had even threatened her with violence and yelled at her, but she kept trying to help him over the years.
“When I got back to the office that day after that sentencing, he called me and I thought he was going to yell at me,” she remembers.
“And I picked up the phone and he was crying and … he said, you know, Miss Erica, I'm so sorry that I'm crying. I'm so embarrassed. I've just never had anyone love me before like you loved me today in that courtroom.”
She says this instance coupled with a difficult home life growing up in Carson City, which led her to become a high school dropout, has made her an advocate for those in need, when the rest of the world is failing them and proper services are lacking.
Roth has an impressive roster of local politicians and community organizers backing her candidacy.
When current assemblywoman Sarah Peters said she would not be running for re-election in 2024, Roth, 34, said she felt it was now her time to run.
Peters is now one of many local Democratic and progressive heavyweights backing Roth, and whose names appear on a flyer for a February 22nd fundraiser.
District 24 which covers UNR, downtown Reno, Midtown, the Wells Avenue district where Roth lives and parts of the old southwest leans heavily democratic so the June 11th primary will be decisive, in less than four months.
An elected assembly member, Roth says, is limited in what they can do, but their role in setting the state budget is crucial to the state’s direction.
“You know, are we putting the right amount of money in into education and are we using our resources well? It’s really important that we have people stepping into these roles who not only have been fighting for their communities, but also know what is required to actually enact that change.”
Roth previously served as Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak’s deputy general counsel, gaining experience on how policy is moved through the levers of power.
She got her degrees at UC Santa Cruz and then at the University of San Francisco School of Law, and moved back to Northern Nevada to be back close to her mother.
Roth helped draft an immediate executive order to protect access to reproductive health services in Nevada following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision.
The issues she has been on the front lines for include protecting the environment, improving prison conditions, expanding abortion access, as well as helping tenants, veterans and the unhoused.
“How do we center the voices of those who are actually impacted by these issues to make sure that the legislation that we pass is going to benefit them? I think that people recognize how I do business in that way,” she says of the support she is receiving.
In terms of abortion rights, Roth drafted the executive order which protected patients, volunteers and providers from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits after the Dobbs decision. The fight is far from over, she says, despite what many often comment on Nevada posts.
“Even though abortion is legal with parameters in the state of Nevada, that does not equal access, and the right to an abortion without access to abortion renders that right obsolete. And so expanding who can access abortion is something that is so critically important to me, especially because we're no longer just serving Nevadans. We are serving patients from all sorts of state who are seeking haven here, and we have to figure out how to serve them,” she explained.
Another fight she will help lead she says is helping tenants.
“You're not supposed to spend more than 30% of your income on rent and we have lots of families spending 50, 60% of their income on rent. There's absolutely no pathway to home ownership, which is how we pass on wealth, generationally. I think some practical things that I would really love to see brought back in the next legislative session are limits on things like fees, right? You can have a landlord make a lot of money just by collecting applications, and the tenant doesn't get that money back,” she said.
Roth started out her career as a legal aid attorney doing housing justice work, and says there’s an unusual and unfair requirement in Nevada for tenants to initiate court proceedings once they receive an eviction notice.
“It really preys on people who don't have the resources to take off of work to deal with these issues. It preys on people who don't have experience in the legal system, which is very scary to navigate, especially when your housing is on the line. And so there are absolutely, really practical protections that we can put in place for renters,” she said.
When asked about her own difficult childhood and teenage years, Roth didn’t give specifics, but said it certainly shaped who she is and why she’s a candidate.
“It’s something that also has motivated me to run because I know what it's like to be a person, a young woman especially, who was in such need of an advocate. And that's really been kind of the driving force in who I have become as a lawyer. And so, you know, that drives so much of what I do and who I am, because I was lucky to have resources that allowed me to overcome those circumstance. But dedicating myself to people who need an advocate is the cornerstone of who I am,” she concluded.