Inmates sue New Mexico Corrections Department over book bans - Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
Bryce Franklin has spent 13 years of his 30-year sentence reading fantasy, horror and science fiction books.
At one point, Franklin participated in a prison program in which he recorded himself reading a book to send to his nephew, who was struggling to learn to read.
Now, a policy that bans physical mail, including books, letters and photos, from being accepted by state-run prison facilities has prevented Franklin and fellow inmates from reading.
Prison officials have said the policy is an attempt to stem the flow of drugs and other contraband into the facility.
Franklin, 35, who was convicted of first-degree murder, another inmate, and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico have filed a lawsuit against the New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) alleging that the policy violates their constitutional rights to receive books, magazines and other publications through the mail.
“NMCD has impermissibly restricted publications access through some combination of official policy, public memo, unwritten and/or secret policy, informal custom and outdated systems,” states a lawsuit filed in 1st Judicial District Court on March 17.
The lawsuit alleges the policy has made it nearly impossible for inmates to access news and literature, violating free speech and procedural due process rights.
“The right to free speech in the United States and in New Mexico is an incredibly foundational, fundamental right and courts have long held that the right to free speech also includes the right to read and to access reading materials,” said ACLU lawyer Lalita Moskowitz.
NMCD declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
On Dec. 29, 2021, NMCD issued a memo that stated in February 2022, personal mail would no longer be accepted at state-run facilities and would first be sent to a third party in Florida to scan, according to the lawsuit. Inmates now have to view an electronic version of their mail.
The department does not pay anything to Smart Communications, the vendor that scans and uploads items to inmate tablets, NMCD spokesperson Brittany Roembach said. Previously, the department used a different vendor named Securus.
“Since 2022, plaintiffs have been unable to access news and literature as they used to do, which has caused harm to them, their learning and person(al) growth and their relationships with their loved ones,” the lawsuit states.
The memo stated magazines and other packages would no longer be accepted because they were “incapable of running through the scanner,” the lawsuit states. However, the policy does not state if the rules would apply to books and other publications, such as newspapers.
“Some of what we allege in our lawsuit is that it’s a little unclear exactly what rules apply in different places, but in both places that our clients had been in, there were these sort of categorical restrictions," Moskowitz said.
“Access to these kinds of materials is also really important for rehabilitation, for people’s connections to the outside world, to their family and loved ones and for developing their minds and bettering themselves while they’re incarcerated,” she said.
The memo was not memorialized in any official NMCD policy and neither inmates nor their families were notified about the change, according to the lawsuit.
“At all private and state-run facilities moving forward, mail will no longer be accepted that is comprised of cardboard or other rigid parchment incapable of running through the scanner,” the memo states. “For example, USPS postal rigid express envelopes that lay flat but do not bend without creasing would not be accepted and magazines will not be accepted.”
A similar memo posted on the Metropolitan Detention Center’s website states the new distribution process "streamlines the current process” and “eliminates a method by which contraband can be introduced to the facility.”
Inmates are only allowed to purchase books if they are from a list of approved vendors and publishers at state prisons. However, a correspondence policy available on inmates’ tablets does not provide a list of the approved vendors, the lawsuit alleges.
Inmates were recently granted access to e-books on their tablets, but only public domain books were available, meaning that they can only access books published before 1931. The e-books are available for free, Roembach said.
Additionally, the lawsuit states NMCD staff allegedly told Franklin and co-inmate and plaintiff Aaron Daugherty, 40, that family members were no longer allowed to order books for inmates, even though the rule was not written into policy. Daugherty is also serving time for first-degree murder.
Instead, inmates were directed to access books at the prison’s library. However, the lawsuit alleges that the libraries are outdated and that books regularly go missing and do not get replaced.
Lawyers believe the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in particular has no budget to replace or add books to the library, though Roembach said inmates are able to ask for specific books and staff will make “reasonable efforts” to secure them.
“Library collections are coordinated centrally through the Reentry Division, which is why individual facilities do not maintain dedicated line-item budgets for purchasing books,” Roembach said. “Facilities fund subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and provide access to library services for individuals in custody.”
Additionally, Franklin and any other inmates classified as level-four offenders — maximum-security inmates — are not able to access the library, the lawsuit states.
In July 2025, Franklin asked a friend to purchase books from Books N Things Warehouse, a vendor that facility staff said was approved. When his orders arrived, they were rejected and sent back before Franklin had a chance to file a grievance, the lawsuit alleges.
He responded by submitting two grievances in October 2025 and stated that staff did not know any vendors he could purchase from, and staff did not have a catalog to order from the singular vendor he believed he could purchase from, according to the lawsuit.
Daugherty filed a similar grievance in June 2025 and prison officials responded by stating that “due to a high volume of security safety with publications through the mail, SNMCF (Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility) will not allow it,” the lawsuit states.
The books are about much more than entertainment for the inmates, Moskowitz said. With books, prisoners can educate themselves and engage with the world and with their loved ones.
“These kinds of family relationships have been shown to be really important and really helpful in reducing recidivism,” she said. “What is often less talked about is the ability for folks to connect with people on the outside as well.”
New Mexico Pueblo governors endorse draft federal legislation to protect Caja del Rio landscape - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
A coalition of New Mexico Pueblo governors last week unanimously voted to endorse forthcoming federal legislation to protect the 107,000-acre expanse of the Caja del Rio plateau, a swath of public lands south of Santa Fe with environmental, historical and spiritual significance to multiple advocacy groups.
The bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), would designate the area as a national monument, and thus add limits to new industrial development. Heinrich will introduce the legislation sometime in April, according to Press Secretary Luis Soriano.
Pueblo leaders, state officials and members of the New Mexico congressional delegation have urged the federal government for years to limit development on the plateau, joined by coalitions of tribal, Hispano, outdoor recreation, ranchers and environmental groups.
A Republican-backed effort to sell off public lands last year identified BLM-owned areas to the south and the northeast of the Caja del Rio Plateau as available for sale. The sell-offs ultimately failed to move through Congress.
In August, federal officials greenlit construction to move forward on a transmission power line project to power Los Alamos National Laboratory, despite overwhelming public opposition.
The plateau, jointly managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, includes many cultural sites, including the La Cieneguilla Petroglyphs, one of the largest concentrations of ancient rock carvings in the state.
The Caja Del Rio is identified as a vital corridor for wildlife and grazing, advocates say, and also a site for spiritual pilgrimage, hunting and firewood for nearby Pueblos and Spanish land grant communities.
The All Pueblo Council of Governor’s vote Friday to back the legislation shows “we all agree the Caja needs to be protected,” Chair Joey Sanchez (Santa Ana Pueblo) said in a statement following the vote.
“The proposed legislation represents a significant step toward ensuring the long-term protection of the Caja del Rio while honoring its deep cultural and historical significance to Indigenous and local communities,” Sanchez said.
Gov. Raymond Aguilar Jr. of Kewa Pueblo called the bill a “landmark piece of legislation” in a statement Friday saying it offers “an important step in the co-management of this sacred place by both federal and Pueblo governments.”
Doña Ana County approves financing for Vado solar farm - Algernon D’Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
A swath of unused land sitting amid farm fields and irrigation canals may sport a new community solar farm in 2027.
Last week, Doña Ana County commissioners unanimously approved up to $10 million in industrial revenue bonds to finance the project in an agricultural community south of Las Cruces.
Senior project developer Pierre Journel of CVE North America said the planned 5-megawatt facility, called the Lower Rio Grande Solar Project, would generate enough power for approximately 1,000 households. The solar farm will cover 32 acres on a parcel of open land in the unincorporated community of Vado. The New York-based developer is leasing the land for 20 years from the Lower Rio Grande Public Waterworks Authority.
Journel said construction could begin this summer with completion in six-to-12 months, with an interconnection agreement with El Paso Electric already in place. The utility’s service area includes a chunk of southern New Mexico moving southeast to Van Horn, Texas.
The solar project is a partner with El Paso Electric in New Mexico’s community solar program. It will distribute power locally to households that subscribe to the project and receive discounts on their utility bills, a scheme allowing consumers to access renewable energy without bearing the cost of home installations.
“At 1 p.m. on a shiny day in the summer, local residents that are flipping on their switch near the project location can be pretty confident that the power is going to be coming from this facility,” Journel told commissioners.
The community solar program, enacted by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2021, allows New Mexico residents to purchase shares or leases of solar farms that produce up to 5 megawatts under a state-approved subscription plan. Subscribers are eligible for reductions in their electric bill based on their share of the project. By law, 30% of a community solar project’s output must be reserved for lower-income subscribers.
The IRB ordinance was approved with little discussion. Commissioner Susana Chaparro made an apparent dig at the county’s $165 billion IRB supporting a controversial data center in Santa Teresa when she said, “It’s refreshing, after other presentations, to have honesty and transparency that prepared this commission for what’s coming instead of doing a last-minute vote.”
Chaparro was the lone vote against financing support for Project Jupiter, a mammoth artificial intelligence training facility under construction for use by Oracle and OpenAI, attributing her no vote to a lack of transparency by that project’s developers.
The solar project site is located at the junction of Myers and Holguin roads. The immediate area did not appear to have sustained damage from last summer’s catastrophic floods in Vado, Berino and adjacent terrain.
Journel said CVE’s interconnection agreement with El Paso Electric includes financing by the developer for "significant" distribution line upgrades in the Vado area, but did not disclose the estimated cost.
Neither the developer nor the utility responded Monday to queries for this story.
“We’re happy to continue seeing the growth of solar projects in the county,” County Chairman Manny Sanchez told the Journal, “and especially the community solar projects that can benefit our communities who may not be able to make investments for solar on their property. This will give our residents more choices.
By the #s: New Mexico’s growing independent voter base - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The number of New Mexico voters who opted not to register with a political party has steadily increased over the last year, ahead of the state’s first-ever semi-open primary.
The June 2 primary election marks the first time that “decline to state” voters — ones unaffiliated with a political party — don’t have to register with a major political party to cast ballots in those parties’ primary races to choose candidates for the general election ballot. In New Mexico, only the major parties, which are the Republican and Democratic parties, appear on primary ballots.
Advocates who pushed the Legislature in 2025 to allow unaffiliated voters into the primary say they are still trying to identify which local elections could be the most affected by the change. They are also still trying to determine how much of the increase in unaffiliated voters can be attributed to people registering that way for the first time versus changing from Democrat or Republican to “decline to state.”
Sila Avcil is co-founding executive director of New Mexico Voters First, a nonprofit seeking to expand voter access. She said roughly a dozen people have approached her in the last year saying they changed their registrations from Republican or Democrat to “decline to state.”
“There’s a lot of people that are like, ‘No, I’m choosing to be an independent, and now I can actually have my voice heard,” she said.
A Source NM review of monthly Secretary of State data suggests that the recent increase in “decline to state” voters is most attributable to people switching from Democrat or Republican, versus new registrations.
Between December 2024 and February 2026, roughly 25,000 more people registered as “decline to state,” but the state’s total number of registered voters increased by only 132 voters in that period.
Meanwhile, the percentage of Democrats statewide dropped slightly from 42% to 41%, from roughly 597,000 voters to 574,000, and the percentage of Republicans statewide dropped from 32% to 31%, from roughly 453,000 voters to about 443,000.
The increases in DTS voters happened most dramatically in the latter months of 2025, according to a Source NM review, and they happened across the state, in Democratic and Republican strongholds and in populous and rural counties.
The biggest percentage increase occurred in rural Quay County in eastern New Mexico between November and December 2025. In that month, the number of registered independents grew by 72 people, from 1,135 people to 1,207.
As of the latest Secretary of State figures, the two counties with the highest percentage of “decline to state” voters are Los Alamos and Doña County, which each have slightly over 30%.
Molly Shank, executive director of Common Cause, told Source NM that a coalition of nonprofit organizations is working to identify counties with high independent populations as it rolls out a publicity campaign this week.
The coalition plans to target outreach efforts in five such communities, which she said are “spread across the state” and the political spectrum, including Bernalillo, Los Alamos and Curry counties.
See a breakdown below of how the percentage of “decline to state” voters has changed since December 2024.
NM Republican party says chair doesn’t need to step down, citing commissioned report - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
The Republican Party of New Mexico on Friday announced it had commissioned a third-party review of the state party’s rules and said it cleared Chair Amy Barela of any obligation to step down, despite party infighting that culminated with county Republican officials calling for her resignation.
The internal dispute bubbled over into public view in mid-March as Barela filed for re-election to her seat on the Otero County Commission. Online records from the New Mexico Secretary of State show she filed to run just two minutes before another Republican filed to challenge her in the June 2 primary election. The party’s uniform state rules say that if the chair “files as a candidate for public office and there is another Republican who has filed for the same office, the state officer shall immediately vacate the party office.”
Republican Party of Bernalillo County First Vice Chair Mark Murton previously told Source NM the issue was so “cut and dry” that he and his colleagues no longer recognized Barela’s legitimacy as state chair.
However, the five-page outside review, conducted by a Dallas-based firm, found that the two minutes between Barela and her challenger filing to run for office matter.
In particular, it focused on the party rule’s requirement that say the chair ought to resign if another Republican “has filed” for the same race. Someone like Barela who filed before there was a confirmed challenger, the report says, is “fully compliant” with the rule.
Despite the report, some Republican leaders continue to call for Barela to resign. In a Facebook infographic circulating in New Mexico conservative groups, Republican Party of Sandoval County Chair Beth Dowling and others posted a question: “What if the RPNM chair ran for governor in a Republican primary and refused to step down? Would that be fair to Gregg, Duke, Doug?” in a reference to the party’s three candidates for governor: Rio Rancho Mayor Greg Hull, former state cabinet secretary Duke Rodriguez and public relations professional Doug Turner.
“She has indirect campaigning, official party authority, built-in advantages,” the post says. “That’s not neutrality. That’s advantage.”
In a Friday statement accompanying the report, Barela said her party “cannot afford any more internal distractions.”
“I am ready to put this behind us and continue moving the party forward. Let’s turn our focus to where it belongs: defeating Democrats and winning elections across New Mexico,” she wrote in a statement.
Barela did not respond to Source NM’s request for comment, though in emails posted by some Republicans on social media, RPNM officials appeared to refer to calls for Barela’s resignation as an internal “coup to usurp the RPNM chair position.”
A statement signed by party leaders, including National Committee member Sen. James Townsend (R-Artesia), urged Republicans across the state to “redirect your attention to getting out the vote for every candidate in your districts and statewide” and cast the issue of infighting as a threat to the good of the party.
“Under the leadership of Chairwoman Amy Barela we have built real momentum. We are seeing growth, increased engagement, and measurable success,” the statement said. “So, we ask you directly: Will you stand with Chairwoman Amy Barela, as your duly elected chair, to flip New Mexico red or will you stand in opposition to that mission?”
NM Public Education Department asks court to accept its plan in landmark equity case - Leah Romero, Source New MexicoThe New Mexico Public Education Department has asked the court overseeing the Yazzie/Martinez education equity lawsuit to overrule plaintiffs’ objections and approve its final remedial plan.
In the latest update in the decade-long case, the state argued that its remedial action plan, filed with the First Judicial District Court in November, sufficiently meets the court’s requirements and should be approved. The state also argued that the plaintiffs’ objections to the plan do not “fairly represent” its contents or necessitate revisions.
District Court Judge Matthew Wilson ordered the PED to complete a remedial plan in April 2025, after finding that at-risk students were still not receiving sufficient educational support, as required by the court in the case’s original decision.
After PED submitted its remedial plan, Yazzie/Martinez plaintiffs filed their formal objections in February, pointing to insufficiently defined goals, a lack of measurable benchmarks and few details about funding needed to implement the plan. They also filed a motion for further relief at that time, asking the court to rewrite the remedial plan along with contracted experts and tribal consultants.
In its response filed on March 23, the state called those objections “flawed, misleading, and in some cases deliberately obtuse,” according to court documents. The state also asked the court to deny the plaintiffs’ motion for further relief and request another plan. “The existence of objections does not justify disregarding PED’s work, in collaboration with stakeholders, [Legislative Education Study Committee, contractors, and other state agencies, in its entirety,” according to court documents.
New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty Education Director Melissa Candelaria told Source NM in a written statement that the Yazzie/Martinez plaintiffs, whom they represent in the lawsuit, “strongly reject PED’s claim that its final plan will meet the needs of the students at the heart of this case or deliver the constitutionally sufficient education they are owed. We will respond through the legal process, but the fundamental issue is clear: you cannot build a stronger education system while shutting out the educators, families, and communities who experience it every day and understand what students truly need.”
Transform Education New Mexico, an advocacy organization, told Source in a written statement that the plan should be a “vision for change” and include steps toward “real transformation.”
“As it stands, teachers and students continue to bear the cost of a broken system that has not meaningfully changed classroom realities,” TENM Executive Director Loretta Trujillo wrote. “Real transformation will require meaningful investment and a willingness to restructure the system itself. With that commitment, we can create the kind of education our students have long been promised and deserve.”