Counties raise alarm over Civil Rights Act costs; lawyers defend it

Clara Bates [email protected], The Santa Fe New MexicanThe Santa Fe New Mexican

Correction appended.

Pointing to rising insurance costs as lawsuits mount, advocates for New Mexico counties want the Legislature to amend a 5-year-old law that makes it easier to sue government agencies over civil rights violations.

The insurance pool covering most New Mexico counties says it has paid out roughly $30 million in settlements and legal costs under the state Civil Rights Act since the law went into effect in July 2021.

Counties have been raising the alarm over the cost of insuring themselves since the passage of the law, which was designed to make it easier for New Mexicans whose civil rights are violated by public entities to get justice.

Particularly driving up costs, said Grace Philips, risk management director of New Mexico Counties — which runs the self-insurance pool — have been claims alleging civil rights violations by law enforcement. The number of claims involving law enforcement has stayed steady but the cost of each has increased. She said training efforts that help to prevent lawsuits in the first place could end up being cut as budgets tighten.

“That increasing cost is going to show up in what counties can do for their communities: how many employees they can hire, what they can pay those employees, what they can invest in training, in hospitals or senior centers or roads or fire and EMS — all that stuff starts to get compromised when you’re spending your money to resolve claims,” Philips said.

The association shared copies of 61 settlement agreements in cases it cited as having involved state Civil Rights Act claims. One was that of Brett Rosenau, whose estate settled for $1.175 million in January 2025 against Bernalillo County. According to the complaint, Albuquerque police and Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies raided the family’s home attempting to execute a warrant and threw tear gas into the home, causing a fire that killed the 15-year-old Rosenau.

In another case, in 2023, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office agreed to pay $32,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by a woman who claimed the agency violated her right to free speech by deleting her posts on its Facebook page and blocking her from the page.

Other settlements related to a string of deaths at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque.

“Government needs to be accountable when it does harm,” Phillips said. “There’s no question about that. But hopefully, we can also agree that government needs to be solvent if it’s going to prevent harm.”

Civil rights attorneys said more information would be needed to assess the accuracy of the association’s cost estimate.

“What gets lost in so much of this is the actual human beings that are being hurt,” said Maria Martinez Sanchez, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. “We understand that our state government, that counties, that cities all operate under ... fiscal constraints and budgets, and you know we have to have enough money in our coffers to continue operating.”

Regardless of the amount counties have incurred in settlement costs, the more important issue is public agencies violating people’s rights, Martinez Sanchez said.

“From my perspective, the settlements aren’t the problem,” she said. “The underlying misconduct and violation of people’s civil rights is the problem, and so the answer is for agencies to stop violating people’s rights, not to strip people of their ... ability to file civil rights lawsuits.”

Legislative history

The New Mexico Civil Rights Act created a right to sue state and local government entities under the New Mexico Constitution for civil rights violations. Designed to provide an avenue to hold government entities accountable, the law also removed a doctrine known as qualified immunity, which shielded public officials — including law enforcement — from liability. (Individual employees are protected from being held personally liable under the Civil Rights Act, but the public agencies employing them can be sued without qualified immunity.)

Prior to the Civil Rights Act, plaintiffs could sue under a federal civil rights law called Section 1983, which provides uncapped damages but offers qualified immunity as a defense. For cases involving government negligence, New Mexico residents could — and still can — sue under the state Tort Claims Act, which is capped, depending on the type of claim, at up to $750,000.

Philips has said counties’ contributions to the insurance pool covering law enforcement claims more than doubled between 2020 and 2026, rising from $16.6 million to $34.4 million.

The county association hopes the Legislature will revisit the Civil Rights Act in the 2027 session. One area of concern is that the law includes an automatic increase to the settlement cap every year, which can expose counties to uninsured risk: The counties’ insurance pool generally covers $2 million per claim, although the law is now capped at $2.5 million, Philips said.

“The bigger the delta between the exposure and the coverage, the greater the likelihood that cases will be settled out of fear that the county just can’t take the risk. And so that’s what needs to be resolved,” she said.

It’s not clear the Legislature will have the appetite to revisit the law.

State Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, earlier this year proposed legislation that would have amended the act to reduce the cap on damages, introduce qualified immunity when the public body had a good-faith belief the conduct didn’t violate the law and clarify state claims arising from the same event can only be recovered under one state law. He said in May that he plans to introduce a version of it again but it “really takes a couple years to get big stuff through.”

Piecemeal data

Philips said the insurance pool has paid out $29,971,022 in settlements in cases which included Civil Rights Act claims, plus the counties’ legal costs, as of Aug. 6.

Settlements resolve an entire case, not individual statutory counts, and defense fees accounted for roughly 5%, the association said. The association said it deducted around $10 million for the total amount of settlements to account for cases including, or threatening, federal claims as well.

Civil rights attorney Laura Ives said more information about the association’s calculations would be needed to determine whether the counties have really paid out $30 million in settlements and legal defense fees and whether federal cases were properly excluded.

Ives also said it’s possible there have been more documented civil rights violations since the legislation passed, pointing to a “rise in deaths” at the Albuquerque jail as a possible alternative explanation for the rising costs. The deaths “followed the same timeline as the Civil Rights Act,” she said.

For other public entities, data on the law’s impact is hard to come by.

The same data for state agencies — which have similarly raised concerns about rising insurance premiums for civil rights claims — is not available. While the state Sunshine Portal shows settlements categorized under “civil rights,” that includes both federal and state claims.

The General Services Department said it is unable to distinguish between state and federal civil rights claims data due to “system limitations.” This fiscal year, the risk management division “will be migrating to a more comprehensive risk management information system capable of addressing our current report and tracking limitations,” said department spokesperson Joe Vigil.

Martinez Sanchez said the ACLU is working to collect and parse the data as well, and that it would be helpful to access data on claims against “all of the public entities subject to the Civil Rights Act” rather than need to file requests with each agency.

“I understand all the discussion around money and how much and evidence, but when we really step back and think about why the law was passed in the first place, we remember that we wanted to provide an avenue for New Mexicans to assert their rights under the New Mexico Constitution — and it’s no secret there have been many lawsuits under this act because there’s many violations of rights,” she said.

This story has been amended to reflect the following correction. A previous version of this story misstated Grace Philips' title.