The Las Vagas Athletic Club (LVAC) has emerged victorious in a recent lawsuit filed by the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) concerning the club’s lack of lifeguards.

A Las Vegas, Nevada, district judge has ruled that an athletic club swimming pool is private and not subject to the Las Vegas Health Department’s in-person lifeguard requirements.

The decision follows a monthslong legal battle as private health clubs fought for their right to use remote lifeguards at their facilities to save on labor costs.

Last summer, the health district revoked a waiver that allowed the Las Vegas Athletic Club to monitor its swimming pools with surveillance cameras instead of a lifeguard. Since April 2020 — when the gym received the waiver from the health department for pandemic-related reasons — surveillance cameras have been permitted to replace in-person lifeguards.

However, following several recent drowning incidents at some of the gym’s seven locations, the health district had revoked that waiver.

On February 4, 2024, a drowning death went unnoticed by athletic club staff as well as club members for at least 20 minutes until gym members finally noticed a lifeless floating woman and pulled her out. Surveillance cameras recorded the incident.

For 10 minutes, 58-year-old Leticia Tripplet can be seen in distress, “kicking erratically,” and “flailing, splashing, and rolling in the water” before she was recorded floating motionless for another 10 minutes. Athletic club staff appeared to be unaware of any issue occurring at the pool for the entire 20 minutes.

Gym members immediately started CPR, but the paramedics declared the woman dead at the scene.

In addition to the fatal drowning, another non-fatal drowning incident occurred at a different Las Vegas Athletic Club location on February 15, involving an unconscious member who was pulled from the water by other gym members while no lifeguard was physically present. Regarding that incident, a health district report stated 'LVAC had not noticed the incident or provided aid until a customer did.'

In response to these incidents, the athletic club was forced to close its pools at all seven locations when the health district said there were too many violations found at remotelymonitored gym pools.

According to the health district, the surveillance cameras were an insufficient monitoring tool: “If, as LVAC asserts, an employee was actively monitoring its pool camera feed throughout the incident, the video shows that LVAC’s active monitoring is incapable of protecting the health and safety of its pool users because it did not detect or respond to its customer’s need for aid,” stated an SNHD order. “If instead LVAC was not actively monitoring the pool camera feed during this incident, which I conclude is more likely under the evidence here, LVAC violated the conditions of the variance and failed to prevent this public health and safety issue. In either case, revocation is proper.”

In June, 2024, the Las Vegas Athletic Club sued the health district over the pool closures, asking a judge to grant an injunction to reopen the pools at its seven clubs.

Following the fatal drowning incident, the athletic club added more monitoring for their pools, including larger surveillance screens. The athletic club stated that the health district’s requirement of in-person lifeguards would be a “financial catastrophe” and that to comply with this requirement, they would be forced to spend $4 million more per year on labor costs for lifeguards, which they argue would “shut down” LVAC’s businesses. The cost to remove the club’s pools was estimated to be between $50 million and $70 million.

'Both of these options would cause extreme financial hardship to LVAC,' the complaint states.

As an alternative solution, the club offered to build a “pool monitoring room” with a trained lifeguard. That monitoring room would oversee all the LVAC pools and be staffed by a lifeguard. This monitoring room would have access cameras that can zoom, pan and tilt and have an intercom system allowing lifeguards to speak to members in the pool areas.

The monitoring room would also have a camera that can be accessed by the health department to keep tabs on LVAC’s operations, the lawsuit stated.

The heart of the athletic club’s arguments, however, hinge on the premise that the health department does not have the authorization to regulate it in the first place.

“LVAC’s operations do not fall within the rubric of public swimming pools,” the complaint stated, because LVAC is a private club and, in 46 years of operations in Nevada, was never required to have a lifeguard for any of its facilities.

Nevada law defines a public swimming pool as 'any structure containing an artificial body of water that is intended to be used collectively by persons for swimming or bathing, regardless of whether a fee is charged for its use.” One exception incudes the provision: “Any location if the structure is a privately owned pool used by members of a private club or invited guests of the member.”

In August, all seven swimming pools at the athletic club’s Las Vegas locations were closed to the public. The pools were reopened in October when the athletic club announced it would be hiring and training lifeguards as part of a new agreement with the health district to reopen its pools.

But on October 6, another person suffered a non-fatal drowning incident at a Las Vegas Athletic Club location when a submerged man was pulled from a hot tub by two club members.

Throughout these proceedings, the athletic club has continued to argue that its pools and other area club pools are private, meaning that they are without regulation or the ability to limit. Furthermore, in its 46 years of existence, the club had never had another drowning fatality.

This February, a Las Vegas district judge sided with the athletic club.

The health department had argued the athletic club’s size and multiple locations formed a basis for denying the private club exemption. But District Judge Timothy Williams found the statute contains no size restriction and the athletic club is private.

The court determined that Southern Nevada Health District's decision was 'arbitrary and capricious' in determining that the athletic club’s pools are public and not exempt as a private club.

The court found that the health district had overstepped its authority because it had failed to persuade the court that the athletic club’s pools are public.

The health department “failed to demonstrate either that these pools pose the same drowning risk as deepwater pools or that a lifeguard could have prevented Ms. Triplett’s death,” Judge Williams wrote in his decision.

“The SNHD’s power to regulate swimming pools is limited to public pools, and here the court finds that SNHD wrongfully changed LVAC’s private club status to public,” the final decision states.