House Bill 4 (HB 4) creates the “New Mexico Civil Rights Act.” The Act gives a person who claims deprivation of “rights, privileges or immunities” secured by the New Mexico Constitution the right to bring a lawsuit in state district court and recover actual damages and injunctive relief. In addition to actual damages, the Act provides that a person who prevails in a lawsuit brought under the Act is entitled to an award of reasonable attorney fees and litigation expenses. The Act prohibits a public body, or those acting on the public body’s behalf who are sued under the Act from using “qualified immunity” as a defense.

A group of leading civil rights attorneys gathers for a discussion of the impact on New Mexico of the George Floyd murder and subsequent conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s death at the hand of Minneapolis Police spurred a New Mexico law that addresses legal protections for police officers.

By MARY HUDETZ June 27, 2019 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A private prison company plans to end its contract to manage a corrections facility in a remote corner of New Mexico starting in the fall, paving the way for the state to begin running the medium-security prison that houses male inmates. The GEO Group, a Florida-based company that currently operates three out of 11 prisons in the state, made the decision to end its contract for the Northeast New Mexico…

A state inmate formerly housed at the Northwest New Mexico Correctional Center in Grants is suing the company that operates the prison, claiming officials allowed six other inmates to assault him for more than 10 minutes without intervening and didn’t provide him care for injuries he received during the attack for about a week. Leonard Lucero, 44, says in his complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court that a corrections officer employed by CoreCivic played a role in the…

One day after prosecutors in the Central Valley cleared a police officer in the fatal shooting of a parolee, attorneys for the man’s family released graphic camera footage showing the officer firing 11 bullets into the man, including several that hit him in the back as he rolled on the ground. Police in Manteca (San Joaquin County) say the officer opened fire after seeing a knife in the man’s hand as the suspect got out of a pickup truck, and that a knife…