It was bad news today for the folks who want to keep smoking legal in Nevada.

The Nevada Supreme Court’s ruling on the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act initiative was the worst of all possible worlds: It kept the initiative on the November ballot, but overruled Carson City District Court Judge Bill Maddox’s ruling that said smoking would also be banned in hotel and motel rooms, under the measure.

That means some big-gun adversaries — including the Nevada Resort Association and Nevada Tourism Alliance, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief hoping to strike down the smoking initiative — may not have the same incentive to fight this measure any longer.

That means the main plaintiffs — Herbst Gaming, P.T.’s Pubs, the Nevada Tavern Owners Association, Nevada Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association and others — are on their own.

Here are some of the highlight’s of the court’s decision, which you can read in its entirety here.

• Many of the arguments the pro-smoking side made against the measure are premature, which is to say, the negative legal effects they predicted won’t actually happen unless the measure is enacted, which isn’t a foregone conclusion. (Still, the measure is very popular, and very likely to pass.)

“Pre-election challenges to an initiative’s substantive constitutionality are not ripe. They lack a concrete factual context in which a provision may be evaluated, and any harm is highly speculative since the measure may not even pass at election time,” the majority of justices wrote.

• The vague term “stand-alone” bars didn’t mislead voters, since the definition was included in the language of the initiative, the court said.

Here’s the thing: According to the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act, a “stand-alone bar” is one without a food-handling license. Since most bars in Nevada also serve food, and thus have food-handling licenses, smoking would be banned in them.

However, the court ordered Secretary of State Dean Heller to clearly note on sample ballot arguments that bars with food-handling licenses would be forced to make smoking illegal.

Still, that wasn’t enough for Chief Justice Robert Rose. He wrote a two-page dissent, saying that all “stand-alone bars” should be exempt from the initiative, not just those without food-handling licenses.

“This initiative espouses the noble purpose of protecting children from second-hand smoke. Unfortunately, that purpose is made far less regal by the misleading representations made in this initiative,” Rose wrote in his dissent. “I would hold the initiative sponsors to the representations they made in most of the initiative and exclude from the smoking provision any ’stand-alone bar,’ whether it can serve food or not; and I would do this because the initiative sponsors failed to meet their burden to give a straightforward, accurate description of a ’stand-alone bar’ throughout the initiative.”

• Hotel and motel rooms are not included in the smoking ban. The court ruled that Maddox “lacked authority at the pre-election stage to interpret the proposal to include hotel and motel rooms,” and thus overturned that portion of his ruling.

It wasn’t the only slam on the judge in the ruling, either. Justices also tossed in this line: “For unknown reasons, the district court did not issue its decision for more than one year, until June 5, 2006.” We at Various Things & Stuff wondered in print once about what why Maddox took so long; we see now we weren’t the only ones.

• The Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act doesn’t require any money to be spent, and thus doesn’t require a new tax as a funding source. This clever argument was made by the pro-smoking side, who reasoned that enforcing the measure would take more cops, court time, and the like. If the court had sided with them, it would have to strike the initiative from the ballot, since it doesn’t explain where to get the additional money.

But the court quickly dismissed that argument, saying it only expanded the areas where smoking would be outlawed. Enforcement spending decisions are still up to local governments, and thus the initiative doesn’t require new spending.

(An interesting side note: Under this initiative, local governments would be empowered to adopt even stricter anti-smoking regulations. Under current state law, only the Legislature can adopt smoking rules.)

• CONCLUSION: Convenience stores, bars and taverns and anybody who believes the owner of an establishment ought to have the right to decide whether smoking is permitted in his property had a really bad day.

But all hope isn’t lost: In addition to the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act, the pro-smoking side has fielded its own initiative, the Responsibly Protect Nevadans from Secondhand Smoke Act. It will appear on the ballot as Question 4. (The Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act will appear on the ballot as Question 5.)

Under the law, if both measures pass — which looks likely, since people have no problem telling others how to live their lives — the one that gets the most votes wins. Somebody on the pro-smoking side better come up with a handy rhyming catchphrase for these things in a hurry.

CLARIFICATION: One of our many eagle-eyed legal eagle readers wrote in to say the Supreme Court’s ruling did not definitively say hotel and motel rooms would be exempt from the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act if it passes. Rather, as we reported above, justices simply ruled Maddox “lacked authority at the pre-election stage to interpret the proposal to include hotel and motel rooms” and that that portion of his ruling was an improper advisory opinion. It’s very possible that, if the measure passes and the inevitable court challenge ensues, another judge or perhaps the Supreme Court might ultimately find that the measure does include hotel and motel rooms.