Nevada: State Supreme Court Repeats Rule Protecting Undocumented Workers

An employee's status as an undocumented alien is irrelevant to the worker's entitlement to basic workers' compensation benefits, held the Supreme Court of Nevada. Reiterating a rule earlier laid down in Tarango v. State Indus. Ins. Sys., 117 Nev. 444, 25 P.3d 175 (2001), the Court stressed that there was nothing in its Tarangodecision that would bar an award indemnity benefits. Certainly, under Tarango, an employer could not be required to provide an undocumented alien with full vocational rehabilitation training; it was illegal for an employer to take on the injured alien as an employee. That issue was completely different, indicated the Court, from the employee's entitlement to indemnity benefits. The federal Immigration Reform and Control Act did not preempt an award of workers' compensation benefits.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Associated Risk Mgmt., Inc. v. Ibanez, 2020 Nev. LEXIS 81 (Dec. 31, 2020)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 66.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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