The Bill That Would Have Ended Puppy Mill Sales Across Nevada Passed 32-9, Then the Senate Gutted It
A bill that would have banned the retail sale of dogs and cats in every pet store in Nevada passed the state Assembly 32-9 in April 2025, then died at the end of the legislative session without becoming law.
Assembly Bill 487, known as Cindy Lou’s Law, was gutted in the Senate and converted into a study measure before the Assembly refused to accept the amendment, killing the bill entirely.
Advocates say they intend to bring a similar measure back in a future legislative session.
Who Was Cindy Lou
Cindy Lou was a small brown-and-white Havanese puppy kept in a pen in the employee bathroom of Puppy Heaven, a pet store in Las Vegas.
An undercover investigator for the Humane Society of the United States found her there in late 2024, lethargic, vomiting, and rarely eating.
When the investigator alerted the store manager that Cindy Lou needed a vet, the manager refused. The investigator then contacted law enforcement, who directed the store to take her in for treatment.
It was too late. Cindy Lou died of liver failure due to congenital liver disease that had gone undiagnosed and untreated while she sat in the store’s back room.
After her death, Cindy Lou’s photos remained on Puppy Heaven’s social media for weeks. When a Humane World researcher called the store posing as a customer asking about her, they were told she had been adopted.
What the Investigation Found
The Humane Society’s undercover operation covered six Southern Nevada pet stores in late 2024, including Puppy Heaven in Las Vegas, Petland in Henderson, and four Puppies for Less locations across the city.
Investigators documented sick puppies receiving no veterinary treatment, staff performing makeshift medical procedures including improvised nebulizers, and puppies with breathing problems, bloody diarrhea, lethargy, and infections.
At Puppy Heaven, puppies were kept in open-topped wire pens from which they regularly climbed out and fell to the hard floor, sometimes overnight.
At Petland Henderson, investigators confirmed the store sourced puppies from known puppy mills and brokers in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, purchasing them for around $800 and reselling them for thousands of dollars, with prices over $3,000 common depending on breed.
Humane World reported that every pet store they visited, and many other puppy stores in Nevada, were purchasing puppies from known puppy mills, including breeders previously featured in their annual Horrible Hundred report on the nation’s worst commercial breeding operations. Nevada had roughly 15 stores selling puppies at the time, with 45 additional pet shops publicly endorsing the bill.
What the Bill Would Have Done
AB487 would have prohibited any retail pet store in Nevada from selling, bartering, auctioning, or otherwise transferring ownership of a dog or cat. Violations would have been treated as a misdemeanor.
The bill would have codified into state law the local ordinances already in place in Clark County, Reno, North Las Vegas, and Mesquite, closing the patchwork of city-by-city bans and making the restriction uniform across Nevada.
Stores would still have been permitted to host adoption events in partnership with shelters and rescues, under the same framework already in place locally.
Notably, 45 Nevada pet stores publicly supported the bill, with advocates pointing out that a store does not need to sell puppies to be profitable in the food, products, and services market.
What Happened in the Senate
The bill passed the Assembly with strong bipartisan support and headed to the Senate Natural Resources Committee.
Testimony in committee was contentious, with animal welfare advocates describing the systemic cruelty of the commercial breeding pipeline and opponents, including the Pet Advocacy Network, arguing the ban would harm small businesses and drive buyers toward unregulated backyard breeders.
By the Senate’s second committee passage deadline in May 2025, the ban language had been stripped out of the bill entirely.
The amended version directed an interim legislative committee to study the retail pet sales industry rather than prohibit it.
The amendment drew strong backlash from animal advocates, who took to social media to demand the original ban language be restored.
The Assembly then refused to concur with the Senate amendment, and no conference agreement was reached before adjournment. No statewide ban exists as of today, and the study was never conducted.
Where It Stands Now
Rebecca Goff, Nevada State Director for Humane World for Animals, said after the bill’s failure that advocates intend to renew the effort in a future session.
“We don’t want to give up on Cindy Lou and all the other puppies that are suffering in the pipeline,” she said.
In the meantime, the patchwork of local bans remains in place. Las Vegas passed its own ordinance in November 2025, joining Clark County, North Las Vegas, Reno, and Mesquite.
Henderson remains the notable outlier in the Las Vegas Valley, still permitting existing stores to sell puppies while restricting new ones.
The Humane Society’s undercover investigation, released in January 2025, helped build the momentum that carried AB487 through the Assembly.
Months later, a high-profile shutdown of a Henderson puppy store over multiple permit violations underscored advocates’ concerns and fueled calls for stronger local and state action.
Whether that momentum survives until a future session is an open question.
What is not in question is that the region’s primary open-admission shelter is already overwhelmed, taking in nearly 90 animals a day, and the commercial breeding pipeline that Cindy Lou’s Law was designed to cut is still operating.