13 Pet Stores Have Until 2028 to Stop Selling Dogs in Las Vegas — Here’s What Changes After That
Las Vegas City Council voted 5-2 in November 2025 to ban pet stores from selling dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, and potbellied pigs, with all 13 existing licensed stores required to comply by November 6, 2028. New pet stores operating in the city are barred from selling those animals immediately.
The ordinance does not close pet stores. Shops can continue selling food, toys, and grooming products, and can partner with local rescues and shelters to host adoption events on their premises, provided the store has no ownership interest in the animals and does not take a cut of adoption fees.
The key change is where animals come from. The law is specifically designed to cut the pipeline between large-scale commercial breeding operations and Las Vegas retail shelves, a supply chain that animal welfare advocates have spent years documenting and fighting.
The ordinance also introduces new welfare standards for animals currently in stores. Dogs must be kept in safe, enclosed areas that prevent unrestricted public access, with quarantine rooms with separate ventilation for any animal under veterinary treatment.
The three-year transition window for existing stores is not unconditional. The exemption terminates if a shop changes ownership, abandons operations for more than 180 days, or has its required licenses revoked.
The one nuance worth knowing: an existing exempt store can relocate once as a direct one-for-one replacement, with the original location closing, without automatically losing its exemption. Opening an additional location does not qualify.
The vote did not happen in isolation. A Henderson pet store was shut down in October 2025 after the city issued an order citing multiple violations of the animal establishment permit, barring it from selling live animals while an investigation was underway.
Investigations by the Humane Society of the United States had already documented sick, untreated puppies and supply chains traced to commercial breeding operations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma across multiple Southern Nevada pet stores. Advocates repeatedly pointed to the Henderson closure in the weeks leading up to the Las Vegas City Council vote.
Clark County had already passed a similar ban in 2022, and North Las Vegas followed in 2024, meaning the city ordinance brought Las Vegas into alignment with the broader regional framework. Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine publicly backed the measure, writing to the council that pet stores have a documented history of selling unhealthy animals to customers who did not know what they were getting.
Mayor Shelley Berkley, who co-introduced the ordinance alongside Councilwoman Nancy Brune, was clear that the law does not shut stores down but ends their ability to sell dogs, cats, rabbits, potbellied pigs, and guinea pigs.
Las Vegas also attempted this before. The city passed a similar ban in 2016, only to repeal it in 2017 when a newly seated council voted 4-3 to overturn it following significant opposition from pet stores and industry lobbyists. The reversal set animal welfare advocates back the better part of a decade before the 2025 vote succeeded.
The statewide picture is more complicated. Nevada’s Assembly Bill 487, known as Cindy Lou’s Law and named after a Havanese puppy who died after being sold sick from a Las Vegas pet store, passed the Nevada Assembly 32-9 in April 2025. The original language would have imposed a statewide retail ban on the sale of dogs and cats.
By the time the bill reached the Senate, the retail ban language had been stripped out and the version under consideration directed an interim legislative committee to study retail pet sales rather than prohibit them. The session ended without a statewide ban being enacted, and advocates are pushing for the original language to be revived in a future session.
For residents looking to add a dog to their household before 2028, the options are unchanged. The Animal Foundation, the region’s only open-admission shelter and currently taking in nearly 90 animals a day, has dogs available for adoption year round, as does Henderson Animal Protection Services.
Responsible breeders selling directly to buyers are also unaffected by the ordinance. What changes in 2028 is that a pet store will no longer be a legal place to buy a dog anywhere in the city of Las Vegas.
Violations carry penalties of $250 to $500 per offense, with each individual sale counted separately, and can be treated as a criminal misdemeanor or civil infraction. Repeated violations can result in revocation of a store’s animal establishment permit.