New Mexico Civil Rights Act hasn’t sparked more lawsuits, police resignations, early study finds

In the years since New Mexico adopted its own Civil Rights Act, the state has not seen a significant uptick in lawsuit settlement payments or police officer resignations, according to a new study presented to state lawmakers Thursday.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, which lets residents allege that their civil rights under the state Constitution have been violated, into law in 2021. It also made New Mexico just the second state in the nation, behind Colorado, to eliminate qualified immunity — which completely shields public officials such as police officers from lawsuits — as a defense.

In the years since the law’s enactment, advocates for local government bodies and law enforcement agencies have argued it would lead to costly settlement payouts and difficulties in recruiting and retaining police officers. The new study presented at Thursday’s interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee, however, found that hasn’t been the case in the law’s first years.

The study, titled “Watching the Sky Not Fall: A Quantitative Study of the Impact of the NMCRA,” used public records requests to analyze law enforcement agency data from 2017 to 2023 in the two states that abolished qualified immunity — New Mexico and Colorado — and in two states that didn’t — Washington and Utah.

Joanna Schwartz, a University of California, Los Angeles School of Law professor who co-authored the study and presented it to state lawmakers, provided a disclaimer with her presentation: Some of New Mexico’s law enforcement agencies didn’t fulfill her records request, limiting her research team’s ability to fully analyze the law’s impact.

“The evolution of litigation under the Civil Rights Act will take years and will develop as lawyers write and defend cases and judges issue rulings,” Schwartz said, adding that researchers need more data before they can make “definitive conclusions” about the full impact of the law.

The data she did obtain, though, showed that New Mexico and Colorado did not see a significant increase in the number of lawsuits filed against law enforcement agencies. It also showed no marked increase in lawsuit payouts or in police officer resignations and retirements. Resignations and retirements peaked in all four surveyed states in 2021, which Schwartz said was likely due to the national protests and sentiment regarding law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.

Across all four surveyed states, the cost of insurance rates increased from 2017 to 2023 — with no indication that increases in New Mexico and Colorado were related to the civil rights laws.

Despite the preliminary findings, officials with the New Mexico Association of Counties speaking alongside Schwartz told lawmakers they want to see the civil rights law amended in the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.

Grace Philips, the New Mexico Association of Counties’ risk management director, told lawmakers she thinks the law needs three amendments to cap how much money can be awarded in these cases; eliminate the practice of plaintiffs’ attorneys recovering money under both the New Mexico Civil Rights Act and other laws in the same case; and require that plaintiffs give government bodies advance notice when they intend to file a lawsuit under the law.

Philips said that limiting the amount of money that can be awarded in these cases will help insurance pools that government entities rely on to stay solvent. The New Mexico Civil Rights Act initially capped claims at $2 million, but a provision in the law says that the cap will increase annually based on cost-of-living metrics.

“Frankly, we’re terrified about the solvency piece,” Philips said, asking lawmakers to go back to the $2 million limit.

State Rep. Marianna Anaya (D-Albuquerque) asked Philips how many settlements under the state civil rights law have hit the maximum payout. Philips said she didn’t have the figure readily available.

Anaya told Philips that civil rights cases brought in federal court under the U.S. Constitution do not have a cap on damages.

“I believe it would be an incentive for us to just keep going with what we have, which seems like a good thing, comparatively,” she said.