California architect did everything right—and the Board of Architecture fined him $29,000
When Jeffrey Hagen, a California-based architect, agreed to help a longtime client with a Las Vegas project, he did everything by the book. He drew up preliminary plans, submitted them to the city for a permit, and applied for reciprocity with the Nevada State Board of Architecture, truthfully disclosing that he was already working with a client and that he was a California architect, not a Nevada one.
The Board responded by charging him with practicing architecture in Nevada without a license and advertising himself as a Nevada architect—allegations the record does not support. Hagen had not claimed to be a Nevada architect, never solicited business as one, and never misrepresented his credentials to anyone. But the Board fined him more than $29,000 anyway, after a proceeding in which it served as its own prosecutor, judge, and jury.
Last Thursday, the Nevada Supreme Court heard oral argument in Hagen’s case, a challenge that asks whether the right to a jury trial means anything if a government agency can simply route around it.
How a $29,000 fine survives without a jury
After Hagen tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate the Board’s proposed settlement terms—which would have subjected him to a fine and public discipline and required him to admit to criminal guilt—he was brought before their in-house tribunal. Board attorneys prosecuted, and Board members decided. They declared Hagen liable and punished him.
He challenged the Board’s decision in district court, arguing it violated his right to a jury trial under both the Nevada Constitution and the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to a jury trial in civil cases. The court disagreed and affirmed the fine. He then appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation.
Nevada’s constitution has guaranteed the right to a jury trial since 1864 for claims like fraud and negligence, which is essentially what the Board alleged against Hagen.
The Board argues that because it’s a modern licensing agency, the old rules don’t apply. PLF’s response is simple: If that logic holds, the right to a jury trial is meaningless. Any government agency could avoid juries simply by bringing its cases in-house, and the legislature could conjure away the right to a jury trial simply by assigning legal claims and remedies to an administrative forum.
Beyond the Nevada Constitution, the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a jury trial in the Seventh Amendment—currently applied only to federal courts—should apply to state governments as well, although that question is preserved for the U.S. Supreme Court. A future ruling on that question would have implications far beyond Nevada and ensure that Americans cannot be stripped of their right to a jury trial by any government agency, state or federal.
At oral argument
Much of Thursday’s argument centered on Nevada’s historical test for its broad jury clause, as well as SEC v. Jarkesy, the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that civil penalty claims rooted in fraud require a jury trial. The Board argued Jarkesy does not apply here—but PLF attorney Cameron Halling pushed back, drawing parallels between Nevada’s historical test and the U.S. Supreme Court’s analysis of common law claims and remedies.
The nature of the Board’s penalty featured prominently. The Board admitted their fine was not primarily concerned with what Hagen actually did; it was using him as an example to deter unlicensed behavior more broadly. Justice Patricia Lee pressed on precisely that point, asking whether that kind of agenda—fining someone not for harm caused but to send a message—makes the case for a jury even stronger.
“The Board wasn’t trying to remedy a harm—no one was hurt by what Hagen did,” Halling explained after the argument. “It was trying to send a message. When the government uses its penalty power to deter and punish rather than restore, the accused have a right to a jury.”
A ruling in Hagen’s favor would mean government agencies cannot exempt themselves from one of the oldest protections in American law simply by keeping their enforcement actions behind closed doors.
