A widely shared animal-welfare graphic says Nevada has taken a new step against horse tripping in rodeos. The underlying concern is real, but the timeline needs clarification: Nevada did not create a new horse-tripping ban in 2025. The state has expressly prohibited intentional horse tripping for sport, entertainment, competition or practice since 2013.
What changed in 2025 was Nevada’s broader animal-cruelty framework. Assembly Bill 381, commonly called Reba’s Law, amended parts of Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 574 and increased penalties for certain especially serious cruelty offenses. The older horse-tripping prohibition remains in the same section of state law.
What Nevada law says about horse tripping
Nevada Revised Statutes 574.100 says a person may not intentionally engage in horse tripping for sport, entertainment, competition or practice. It also bars a person from knowingly organizing, sponsoring, promoting, overseeing or collecting admission money for a charreada or rodeo that includes horse tripping.
The statute defines horse tripping as roping an equine’s legs, or using another object, to intentionally trip the animal or cause it to fall. The definition covers horses, mules, burros, asses and other equines.
There are narrow exclusions. The definition does not cover tripping an equine to provide medical or other health care. It also excludes catching an animal by the legs and then releasing it as part of a permitted horse-roping event. Those exclusions do not erase the statute’s direct ban on intentional horse tripping for entertainment or competition.
The ban began in 2013
Nevada lawmakers added the specific horse-tripping language in 2013. Contemporary reporting from the ASPCA recorded that then-Governor Brian Sandoval signed the measure that prohibited intentional horse tripping. The current statute’s legislative history also cites the 2013 enactment.
That history matters because a claim that a Nevada governor newly “signed a ban” in 2025 can leave readers with the wrong impression. The core prohibition is more than a decade old.
What Reba’s Law changed in 2025
In 2025, Nevada enacted Assembly Bill 381. Its changes included stronger felony treatment for certain willful and malicious cruelty that causes an animal’s death, stronger penalties when cruelty is used to threaten or terrorize a person, revised abandonment provisions, and increased penalties for severe cruelty to police animals.
Because the law amended NRS 574.100, the final statutory text republishes the horse-tripping language alongside the revised cruelty penalties. That does not mean lawmakers introduced the horse-tripping ban in 2025. A more accurate description is that Nevada retained its 2013 ban while updating other parts of the state’s cruelty law.
Why accurate framing protects animals
Horse tripping can expose an animal to fear, impact injuries and loss of control. The welfare case against deliberately forcing a horse to fall is straightforward. Accuracy strengthens that case: advocates, readers and event operators need to know what conduct the law actually prohibits, when the rule took effect and which exceptions the legislature wrote into it.
Nevada’s current position is clear. Intentional horse tripping for sport or entertainment is prohibited, and promoting a rodeo or charreada that includes it is also prohibited. The 2025 legislation strengthened parts of the broader cruelty regime, but Nevada’s specific horse-tripping ban dates to 2013.
