Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Civil lawsuit refiled

CLOVIS — A New Mexico advocacy group has refiled a civil lawsuit in Curry County against Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Attorney General Hector Balderas.

The New Mexico Patriots Advocacy Coalition charges that Toulouse Oliver and Balderas denied citizens their rights for referendums on various items passed during the 2019 legislative session.

A similar lawsuit was filed in Curry County last July, but dismissed on Friday by District Judge Fred Van Soelen. A. Blair Dunn, attorney for NMPAC, filed another suit after the dismissal decision. It has initially been assigned to District Judge David Reeb, with future actions yet to be scheduled.

Dunn, counsel for NMPAC, said the case could be tried in pretty much every New Mexico county because there are various conservatives that make up NMPAC.

“We believe there’s good conservative judges that will uphold the Constitution in the eastern part of the state,” Dunn said. “I don’t have that same confidence in the judges of the Second Judicial District here in Bernalillo County, not all of them.”

According to the lawsuit, a group of New Mexicans sought to petition for a referendum on 10 bills passed by the New Mexico Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The bills included background checks for firearm sales, expansion of categories for people who cannot possess a firearm, a prohibition on coyote-killing contests, minimum-wage increases, the Wildlife Corridors Act, the state’s entrance into a pact to give all of its presidential election electoral votes to the popular vote winner, voter registration expansion and campaign finance reform.

Each petition was rejected by Toulouse Oliver, in consultation with Balderas, because they related to “either public peace, safety or health” and were not available to be challenged.

The suit asks those denials, and the aforementioned state laws on background checks and firearm possession, be declared unconstitutional.

In his decision letter on the 2019 civil suit, Van Soelen noted NMPAC was not registered as a political advocacy group when it filed the civil suit July 25, and thus lacked the legal capacity to sue. He added that Curry County was not a proper venue because NMPAC provided no evidence it resided or was headquartered in Curry County when the suit was filed.

Dunn said those matters were taken care of soon after the initial filing and before any actions were taken by Balderas to seek dismissal. He didn’t see a reason for Van Soelen to dismiss the suit or to take five months to make the decision, but he said he and his clients’ energy would be better spent refiling the case with a different judge.

“What was previously the amended complaint (in 2019) is now the first complaint,” in the 2020 filing, Dunn said.

Alex Curtas of the Secretary of State’s Office said the office has not been served with the new filing, but in the interim stands by its original legal analysis on the 2019 lawsuit that the petitions did not meet the bar set by the state constitution for citizen referendums.

A message to Balderas’ office was not immediately returned.