Leon Howard, ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director and Senator Katy Duhigg
Five years ago, New Mexico made a promise.
When our state passed the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, we declared that the rights guaranteed by the New Mexico Constitution meant something. Not just in theory. Not just in flowery speeches. Not just when government officials choose to respect them. We said that when people in positions of power violate those rights, New Mexicans deserve a meaningful way to hold those people accountable.
That promise matters now more than ever.
We have watched the U.S. Supreme Court roll back well-settled rights one by one. The court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. It eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, leading to the largest reduction in minority representation since the end of Reconstruction. It overruled decades of precedent allowing for affirmative action in higher education. We continue to see attacks on equal protection, due process, free speech, and the basic idea that the government must be accountable to the people it serves.
New Mexico cannot control every decision coming out of Washington, D.C. But we can control what we do in our own state.
The New Mexico Civil Rights Act is a declaration that the rights enshrined in our state Bill of Rights are not optional. It allows New Mexicans to bring claims in state court when police officers, jail officials, school officials, or other public actors violate rights protected by the New Mexico Bill of Rights. Before the NMCRA, people with legitimate civil rights cases were forced into federal court, where qualified immunity often shut the courthouse doors before a victim ever had a real chance to be heard.
That is not accountability. That is impunity.
The NMCRA says that if the government violates your rights, you have a fair opportunity to prove your case. That is the foundation of a free society.
Yet predictably, the same old playbook is back. Some local governments and their lobbyists now say the NMCRA costs too much. They point to insurance costs and settlements, often without providing the proof, context, or facts the public deserves. What is almost always missing is any serious discussion of why these claims exist. They rarely talk about investing in better hiring, training, and supervision, or about changing the practices that lead to civil rights violations, or about the families who suffer when someone in power treats constitutional limits as optional.
They talk about cost and liability — but not harm or accountability.
We should be honest about what these cases involve. These are not abstractions. These are real New Mexicans whose lives have been altered forever.
A family in Albuquerque lost their home after a SWAT operation caused a fire. A 15-year-old child, Brett Rosenau, died. A 70-year-old woman was arrested and held for days after peacefully protesting outside a gun show. A Valencia County resident was threatened with criminal prosecution because of anti-Trump signs in her own yard.
As a civil rights litigator and a legislator who practices law, we want to be clear about something that often gets lost in the political rhetoric: people do not receive settlements or judgments simply because they ask for them. They have to prove their case — lost wages, medical bills, pain, suffering, trauma, or the impossible value of a life taken or permanently changed. Government lawyers fight every dollar. If a plaintiff cannot prove damages, they will not recover.
The better question is this: what protection do the people need from the government?
That is the question the NMCRA answers.