New Mexico Supreme Court upholds governor’s health orders, says state can impose penalties

SANTA FE, New Mexico — New Mexico state officials have the power to impose civil penalties when enforcing public health orders that call for businesses to restrict their operations amid a public health emergency, the state Supreme Court said Friday.

The unanimous written opinion details the legal reasoning for an oral decision made by the court in August in a case brought by businesses that challenged health orders issued as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had petitioned the court to resolve the dispute.

Lujan Grisham has warned that more restrictions could be imposed as early as next week as infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to increase. She also said she has been disappointed in enforcement, pointing to businesses and country clubs in Albuquerque and elsewhere that hosted Halloween parties despite the ban on gatherings.

“These crackdowns and evidence-based strategies are only as good as the folks who practice them,” Lujan Grisham said during Thursday's briefing. “If they’re not going to do that, then it isn’t going to work. It’s true. We’re demonstrating that it's true by the crisis that we’re currently in.”

New Mexico health officials have reported escalating rates of spread along with record numbers of daily confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths related to the virus. The number of people needing to be hospitalized also has been growing. Health care officials say they are running out of room and staff.

In the opinion, the court concludes that the Legislature gave the governor and other state officials power to enforce public health order restrictions on businesses through a provision in the Public Health Emergency Response Act. The court says the act provides for daily fines of $5,000.

The business owners claimed Lujan Grisham's administration overstepped its authority in imposing fines higher than $100 citations.

The justices wrote that the law offers due process because state health officials must conduct an administrative hearing before a fine can be imposed.

The court declined to address whether the state must compensate businesses that are forced to close or take other actions because of the public health restrictions. The argument was that those actions result in a taking of private property by the government. The justices said there were insufficient facts in the record and in court filings to resolve the question.

Republican lawmakers and business owners across the state have been critical of the governor's responses to the pandemic. They said in October when restaurant operating hours and other restrictions were imposed that businesses were already struggling to stay open after months of restrictions.

The Republican Party of New Mexico said Friday it still disagrees with the outcome of the legal challenge.

“The court acknowledged that what the governor is doing is beyond the ‘enumerated powers’ she is given in the law and based its ruling on a ‘liberal construction’ of the law,” the party said in a statement. “We think that’s inappropriate when hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans’ livelihoods are permanently at stake.”

Lujan Grisham said she was disappointed that enforcement has to happen at all and that people should be doing what they can to limit social contact and stay home to prevent more spread. She also said law enforcement could and should do more to ensure people are abiding by the restrictions.

“We have to find better ways as a state and a nation to manage the virus because otherwise, what we’re faced with as a state is stay-at-home orders until next September or next November or next December,” she said. “... I don’t think anyone anywhere in the world is thinking about trying to do that and sustain it for a year, for any number of reasons — not the least of which is you don’t have a way to recover from that economic collapse. That’s the issue.”