LOS ANGELES — On Thursday, National Hockey League owners approved the relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to Salt Lake City. The team will be playing in Salt Lake City next season. Done deal.

In November, Major League Baseball owners approved the relocation of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. The team plans to play in Sacramento for the next three years, with the intention of moving into a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028. Done deal?

The A's themselves might be growing a wee bit concerned, based on a court filing this week.

Quick rewind: The Nevada Legislature last June approved $380 million in public funding toward the new ballpark. The governor promptly signed the bill, which leaves the A's and owner John Fisher responsible for the balance of the estimated $1.5 billion construction cost.

A Nevada teachers' union announced two challenges to the public funding, pursuing a referendum that would let voters decide and filing a lawsuit alleging the bill was unconstitutional.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last October that "an adverse development with respect to that referendum … would be a significant development."

The pitch to voters could be attractive: Do you want to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to an out-of-state billionaire? In an Emerson College poll of likely Las Vegas voters released this month, 52% opposed public funding for the ballpark and 32% favored it, with 17% unsure.

However, the referendum becomes a little more of a long shot with each passing day. The A's and their allies have objected to the proposed language of the referendum petition, and the matter remains unresolved after seven months in the Nevada courts.

The union cannot start gathering signatures until the matter is resolved — and would need to collect more than 100,000 signatures by June 26 in order for the referendum to appear on the November ballot.

The lawsuit was filed in February, alleging the public funding violated the state Constitution in as many as five different ways and naming the state of Nevada, the governor and the state treasurer as defendants. Nothing of substance has happened in that case since then.

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