MON: Conservation groups sue feds over killing predators in wilderness areas, + More
By KUNM News
June 15, 2026 at 9:35 AM MDT
Conservation groups sue feds over killing predators in wilderness areas
—Algernon d’Amassa, Albuquerque Journal
On its website, the U.S. Forest Service says of wilderness areas, “These are special places where nature still calls the shots.”
But a new federal lawsuit alleges that when it comes to predators on protected public lands, the government is deferring more to ranchers than Mother Nature.
Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management over the killing of predator animals by federal employees in designated wilderness areas, arguing the practice violates a law preserving “untrammeled” natural places.
WildEarth Guardians joined the Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch in filing the complaint last month in New Mexico’s U.S. District Court.
The organizations are asking a court to review “predator control” actions by Wildlife Services, a division of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, known as APHIS.
Among its activities, Wildlife Services kills predators as part of a strategy to manage wildlife and protect against livestock depredation, crop loss and property damage. A spokesperson for APHIS declined to comment on the litigation.
The plaintiffs argue that “federally subsidized wildlife killing” has been practiced “solely to promote the private economic interests of producers that are already afforded the heavily subsidized privilege to commercially graze livestock on federal public lands.”
The legal question is whether the 1964 Wilderness Act allows Wildlife Services to kill natural predators in 803 designated wilderness areas, covering 111.7 million acres of public land nationwide. While the law allows for grazing in areas where it has taken place since before the wilderness area designation by Congress, the lawsuit argues this does not authorize the government to kill carnivores that may hunt those animals.
Yet, according to the most recent data posted by APHIS, Wildlife Services killed 2,625 coyotes in New Mexico in 2024, trapped six Mexican gray wolves and relocated two mountain lions.
In an interview, WildEarth Guardians' senior staff attorney, Jennifer Schwartz, emphasized, “This isn’t a challenge to anyone’s privilege to graze in wilderness. … Congress specifically provided for livestock grazing, but it did not provide for killing native wildlife on behalf of commercial grazing operations. It didn't provide for taxpayer-funded predator control. That is very antithetical to the other core purposes of the statute, in terms of keeping wilderness untrammeled, where the forces of nature prevail.”
She said the agencies have reasoned that, since Congress did not forbid predator control practices in wilderness areas, they could interpret it as implicitly permitted.
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chevron U.S.A v. Natural Resources Defense Council, courts have given executive branch agencies discretion to interpret ambiguities in statutes. If the agency’s interpretation was reasonable, the courts deferred to them.
That deference, nicknamed the “Chevron doctrine,” fell in 2024 under a pair of decisions where the high court upheld a provision of the Administrative Procedure Act that says reviewing courts “shall decide all relevant questions of law.”
The fall of the Chevron doctrine opened the door to ask the court to enforce a plain reading of the statute, Schwartz said.
“This is our most strictly construed conservation law,” she said. “To perversely expand the narrow grazing exception to also include killing native wildlife, on behalf of private grazing operations, is a gross misreading of the statute.”
The lawsuit has been assigned preliminarily to federal Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar in Albuquerque. Further proceedings have not yet been scheduled.
As pedestrian deaths decline in New Mexico, cyclist deaths double to highest number in 20 years
—John Miller, Albuquerque Journal
When he was a student at New Mexico State University, Matt Mason biked as many as 1,000 miles each semester — far enough in a school year to crisscross the width of the Land of Enchantment at least four times.
But while biking to campus along a familiar route on North Telshor Boulevard in 2012, Mason’s relationship to the sport changed when he was struck by a driver, who veered into his path while making a left-hand turn.
“I slammed on my brakes and sort of rolled across their hood,” Mason said. “I ended up landing on my feet right next to the driver on their side of the car. It was just kind of a miraculous thing — I was more or less unhurt, but the bike was bent in half and destroyed.”
It was the last road bike Mason ever owned.
This spring, for the first time in about a decade, New Mexico improved from the most dangerous state in the nation for pedestrian deaths to ninth in the Governors Highway Safety Association ratings.
Using crash data from the first half of 2025, the nonprofit projected that pedestrian fatalities in New Mexico fell to 1.27 deaths per 100,000 people last year, from a 2.49 death rate in 2024.
The projection appears on track with full-year data from the University of New Mexico, which notes pedestrian fatalities declined from 102 deaths in 2024 to 88 in 2025.
State officials this week celebrated the improved safety rating, attributing it to new initiatives aimed at keeping people safer on or near New Mexico roadways.
“New Mexico’s progress in pedestrian safety is the result of dedicated work happening across the state,” Shannon Glendenning, New Mexico Department of Transportation traffic safety division director, said in a statement.
But over the same year-to-year period, UNM recorded a separate yet related metric moving in the opposite direction and at a much higher rate.
From 2024 to 2025, deaths among pedal cyclists — bicyclists or any other vehicle propelled by human-powered pedals — doubled, rising from seven in 2024 to 14 in 2025.
That marks the most cyclist traffic deaths in a single year since 2006, when there were four, according to UNM.
That statistic didn’t get much airtime at a meeting of the Transportation Infrastructure Revenue Subcommittee on Tuesday and appeared nowhere in a news release issued two days later announcing the decline in pedestrian fatalities.
Cyclist deaths on or near roadways in New Mexico and nationwide are vastly outnumbered by pedestrian deaths, accounting for just 3% of the 454 total traffic fatalities recorded in New Mexico last year.
But while pedestrian deaths are on the decline — with the Governors Highway Safety Association noting an 11% dip in such deaths nationwide — fatalities among cyclists are on the rise in many American cities.
According to the National Safety Council, the “number of preventable deaths from bicycle transportation incidents (in the U.S.) increased by 1% in 2024 and 37% in the last 10 years (from 1,015 in 2015 to 1,392 in 2024).”
The 14 deaths logged in 2025 in New Mexico are more than double the average of the roughly 6.5 cyclist deaths recorded in the state each year since 2006.
While cyclist deaths have fluctuated in that time, the average number of these fatalities rose to 7.7 deaths per year in the last 10 years versus 5.5 deaths in the previous decade.
Dan Majewski, who regularly bikes to work in Downtown Albuquerque, knows which roads to take and which to avoid, giving preference to streets with wider shoulders and designated bike lanes.
With more deaths among cyclists reported in the state every year, he understands why some people choose to ride outside New Mexico’s metro areas or don’t pick up the sport at all.
“I think there’s a big barrier to getting started riding,” he said. “You have to kind of learn through doing. There’s signage out there, and the city certainly tries. But you have to plan it out, you know?”
Several bicyclist traffic deaths have made headlines in New Mexico in recent years.
In May 2024, an 11-year-old boy was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly intentionally hitting and killing a physicist named Michael Habermehl, who was riding to work on an e-bike.
A year and a half later, Santa Fe resident Steven Ballinger was struck by a pickup truck driver and later died in a hospital.
In July 2025, 19-year-old Albuquerque cyclist Kayla VanLandingham was struck and killed at a bike crossing on Carlisle.
Just over a month ago, 47-year-old Robert Montoya was also hit and killed while riding to work on an e-bike just north of Interstate 40 in Northeast Albuquerque, which consistently logs about half of all cyclist deaths in the state.
Majewski previously sat on the board for BikeABQ, a safety advocate organization founded in 1999 to raise awareness of bicyclists on the state’s roadways, which officials have worked to make safer in recent years.
Legislators in 2023 passed House Memorial 85, titled “Target Zero,” which aims to achieve an annual traffic safety record of zero vehicle-related deaths or serious injuries by the end of the decade.
In March, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed new legislation requiring student drivers to take at least three hours of training on “vulnerable road users,” such as bicyclists, pedestrians and emergency service providers.
The 2023 resolution committed NMDOT to following a national model called Complete Streets, which recommends roadway projects consider multimodal forms of transportation and road “equity.”
Some cyclists say reinforcing legislation will be necessary to give it teeth.
Carl Colonius, a longtime cyclist, Taos resident and program manager for the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division, is one of them.
He illustrated the problem with a recent example south of Taos.
“You know the road that goes down through Llano Quemado by the water treatment plant toward the golf course?” he said. “That road was just repaved, beautifully done, but it doesn’t have a shoulder because that’s not a sensitivity a lot of public works directors in New Mexico have. Why would you waste 10% of your project building a shoulder? Biking and walking are not something they necessarily recognize.”
Recently, Colonius went on a ride with Graveleros, a spring and summertime biking meetup that Mason started in Las Cruces, one of several cities developing a municipal trail system to give cyclists safer routes to ride.
“There’s a wide age range, culture, gender, type of bike,” Colonius said of the experience. “So you’ve got hardcore road bikers who show up in their lycra with a matching kit, to the dude on a cruiser wearing cut-off overalls who has a basket for his cat.”
The group is a kind of microcosm for the wider New Mexico cycling community. Stories of close calls with drivers, collisions and chilling stories of final rides that ended fatally — with a white-painted bike marking the spot — remain a dark trope here and among other cycling enthusiasts throughout the state.
As of last month, UNM reported that five pedal cyclists have died so far in New Mexico in 2026.
“I don’t like to say it because I don’t want to discourage people from riding,” Mason said. “But in my mind, I sort of say that every car that passes me when I’m riding on the road could be the one that kills me. I try to keep that number as close to zero as possible while still getting where I want to go.”
USDOJ sues NM Supreme Court, alleging spouse of Air Force major illegally denied NM law license
—Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The United States Justice Department on Thursday filed a lawsuit against New Mexico’s top court and the body that licenses lawyers in the state for allegedly violating federal law by not granting law licenses to the spouses of military servicemembers transferred to New Mexico.
The lawsuit against the New Mexico Supreme Court and the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners centers around Liam Lees, whose wife, an Air Force major, was transferred to Holloman Air Force Base from Virginia in April of 2024.
Lees, who is licensed to practice law in Texas, Washington and Maryland, applied for a law license in New Mexico after being hired as a trial attorney at the Doña Ana County District Attorney’s Office. The New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners told him he did not qualify for a license, because he only held a Master of Laws degree from William and Mary Law School in Virginia.
State rules require a juris doctorate or equivalent and specify that a Master of Laws, a postgraduate degree, does not by itself make an applicant eligible to practice law in the state.
Lees sought a waiver to that rule from the Supreme Court, which denied him on a 3-2 vote. As a result, he became a law clerk at the district attorney’s office, earning a much lower salary, according to the lawsuit.
Lees could not be reached for comment. An automatic reply to his email address at the Doña Ana County District Attorney’s Office noted that he had stopped working at the office in late March.
Later, Lees learned that he could receive a separate waiver as the spouse of a military member transferred to New Mexico, based on a 2024 change to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act intended to help attorney spouses of military members maintain employment amid regular transfers between bases.
But the lawsuit alleges New Mexico’s Board of Bar Examiners and Supreme Court failed to honor that waiver and grant him a license, even after the United States Attorney’s Office weighed in via several letters on Lees’ behalf.
The lawsuit alleges that New Mexico failed to adhere to federal law in Lees’ case and also that the state has a “pattern and practice” of imposing unnecessary and illegal burdens on military spouses, including transcripts and test scores.
The lawsuit does not specify how many other military spouses may have illegally been denied licenses.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison, in a statement Thursday announcing the lawsuit, noted that New Mexico houses four major military bases and more than 14,000 servicemembers. Keeping them here requires accommodating their spouses, he said.
“Spousal unemployment is a leading cause of servicemembers leaving military service and is a significant readiness and retention issue,” he said. “This lawsuit highlights the fact that license portability is a critical tool for our military spouses to be able to earn a living in the manner of their choosing.”
But Mark Baker, the attorney representing New Mexico in the lawsuit, said in a statement to Source NM that the DOJ is getting in the way of New Mexico’s right to determine who is fit to practice law in the state.
“This lawsuit by the federal government threatens to dismantle protections for the people of New Mexico that ensure they receive professional legal services from attorneys of good ethical and moral character,” he said.
He added that the Supreme Court “welcomes military spouses to practice law in our state,” and noted that one such military spouse has received a law license through the state’s existing process.
“We have full confidence that the federal judicial system will fairly resolve this dispute and determine that the lawsuit’s claims lack merit,” he said.
DOH says stop using infant formula that’s been linked to botulism — Daniel Montaño
State officials are urging residents to stop using an infant formula that has been recalled after being linked to three cases of infant botulism across the country.
A nationwide recall of Nara Organics’ Whole Milk Organic Infant Formula was announced Saturday June 13 after being linked to cases of infant botulism in California, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Although officials said no infant botulism cases have been reported here, the New Mexico Department of Health made an announcement Monday urging residents to stop using the Nara Organics formula immediately, but officials say not to throw it away.
If an infant develops botulism, NMDOH may want to test the formula. Officials said to take a picture, and record the lot number and use by date. Seal it and store it in a safe place away from other food items. If no symptoms develop after a month, it can be thrown away.
Nara Organics is sold nationally at Target and Target.com, and at nara.com.
NMDOH Deputy State Epidemiologist, Dr. Chad Smelser said botulism is a rare disease that causes difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis and even death. He says it can quickly become a medical emergency.
Botulism in infants can take a couple of weeks to develop symptoms like constipation, difficulty swallowing, or a loss of head control leading to what's known as a “floppy baby” appearance.
Parents with non-urgent questions can call the NMDOH helpline or text questions to 66364.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Lovelace Health System cuts dozens of roles, citing ‘challenging policy environment’
—Keelin Fisher, Albuquerque Journal
Lovelace Health System cut 43 employees from its workforce on Wednesday, citing increased costs and what officials describe as a “challenging policy environment.”
A spokesperson said the eliminated positions make up nearly 2% of the local workforce and primarily consist of administrative and support roles. The decision was made to ensure the organization’s structure “keeps pace with current realities,” the spokesperson, Whitney Wells, wrote in an email.
Wells did not elaborate on the reason for the layoffs but said the move would not affect patient care. She said the health system is “supporting affected team members through this transition,” adding that Lovelace will place some affected staff into other open roles.
“These are difficult decisions, and we don’t take them lightly,” Wells said.
The Lovelace layoffs come just eight days after Presbyterian Healthcare Services, New Mexico’s largest health system, cut 150 administrative roles and most of its Medicare Advantage plans, which its CEO Rishi Sikka said would void about $59 million in annual losses. Presbyterian officials said the decision was made to preserve its status as an independent healthcare provider.
The cuts also follow a new four-year deal reached between Lovelace and Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico in late May, which helped avert coverage disruption for thousands of patients just days before a previous agreement was set to expire.
Inmate dies in Tierra Amarilla Detention Center
—Rio Grande Sun
In Rio Arriba County, The Rio Grande Sun reports that an inmate at the Tierra Amarilla Detention Center died in late April.
44-year-old Joey Rodriguez, of Velarde, died on April 26, one day after being booked into the facility from undetermined causes. The Sun reports the man complained of methadone withdrawal.
Rodriguez had been jailed on charges of child abuse, aggravated battery on a household member and false imprisonment.
The Sun reports the death is being investigated by the state Office of the Medical Investigator.
—Algernon d’Amassa, Albuquerque Journal
On its website, the U.S. Forest Service says of wilderness areas, “These are special places where nature still calls the shots.”
But a new federal lawsuit alleges that when it comes to predators on protected public lands, the government is deferring more to ranchers than Mother Nature.
Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management over the killing of predator animals by federal employees in designated wilderness areas, arguing the practice violates a law preserving “untrammeled” natural places.
WildEarth Guardians joined the Western Watersheds Project and Wilderness Watch in filing the complaint last month in New Mexico’s U.S. District Court.
The organizations are asking a court to review “predator control” actions by Wildlife Services, a division of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, known as APHIS.
Among its activities, Wildlife Services kills predators as part of a strategy to manage wildlife and protect against livestock depredation, crop loss and property damage. A spokesperson for APHIS declined to comment on the litigation.
The plaintiffs argue that “federally subsidized wildlife killing” has been practiced “solely to promote the private economic interests of producers that are already afforded the heavily subsidized privilege to commercially graze livestock on federal public lands.”
The legal question is whether the 1964 Wilderness Act allows Wildlife Services to kill natural predators in 803 designated wilderness areas, covering 111.7 million acres of public land nationwide. While the law allows for grazing in areas where it has taken place since before the wilderness area designation by Congress, the lawsuit argues this does not authorize the government to kill carnivores that may hunt those animals.
Yet, according to the most recent data posted by APHIS, Wildlife Services killed 2,625 coyotes in New Mexico in 2024, trapped six Mexican gray wolves and relocated two mountain lions.
In an interview, WildEarth Guardians' senior staff attorney, Jennifer Schwartz, emphasized, “This isn’t a challenge to anyone’s privilege to graze in wilderness. … Congress specifically provided for livestock grazing, but it did not provide for killing native wildlife on behalf of commercial grazing operations. It didn't provide for taxpayer-funded predator control. That is very antithetical to the other core purposes of the statute, in terms of keeping wilderness untrammeled, where the forces of nature prevail.”
She said the agencies have reasoned that, since Congress did not forbid predator control practices in wilderness areas, they could interpret it as implicitly permitted.
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Chevron U.S.A v. Natural Resources Defense Council, courts have given executive branch agencies discretion to interpret ambiguities in statutes. If the agency’s interpretation was reasonable, the courts deferred to them.
That deference, nicknamed the “Chevron doctrine,” fell in 2024 under a pair of decisions where the high court upheld a provision of the Administrative Procedure Act that says reviewing courts “shall decide all relevant questions of law.”
The fall of the Chevron doctrine opened the door to ask the court to enforce a plain reading of the statute, Schwartz said.
“This is our most strictly construed conservation law,” she said. “To perversely expand the narrow grazing exception to also include killing native wildlife, on behalf of private grazing operations, is a gross misreading of the statute.”
The lawsuit has been assigned preliminarily to federal Magistrate Judge John Robbenhaar in Albuquerque. Further proceedings have not yet been scheduled.
As pedestrian deaths decline in New Mexico, cyclist deaths double to highest number in 20 years
—John Miller, Albuquerque Journal
When he was a student at New Mexico State University, Matt Mason biked as many as 1,000 miles each semester — far enough in a school year to crisscross the width of the Land of Enchantment at least four times.
But while biking to campus along a familiar route on North Telshor Boulevard in 2012, Mason’s relationship to the sport changed when he was struck by a driver, who veered into his path while making a left-hand turn.
“I slammed on my brakes and sort of rolled across their hood,” Mason said. “I ended up landing on my feet right next to the driver on their side of the car. It was just kind of a miraculous thing — I was more or less unhurt, but the bike was bent in half and destroyed.”
It was the last road bike Mason ever owned.
This spring, for the first time in about a decade, New Mexico improved from the most dangerous state in the nation for pedestrian deaths to ninth in the Governors Highway Safety Association ratings.
Using crash data from the first half of 2025, the nonprofit projected that pedestrian fatalities in New Mexico fell to 1.27 deaths per 100,000 people last year, from a 2.49 death rate in 2024.
The projection appears on track with full-year data from the University of New Mexico, which notes pedestrian fatalities declined from 102 deaths in 2024 to 88 in 2025.
State officials this week celebrated the improved safety rating, attributing it to new initiatives aimed at keeping people safer on or near New Mexico roadways.
“New Mexico’s progress in pedestrian safety is the result of dedicated work happening across the state,” Shannon Glendenning, New Mexico Department of Transportation traffic safety division director, said in a statement.
But over the same year-to-year period, UNM recorded a separate yet related metric moving in the opposite direction and at a much higher rate.
From 2024 to 2025, deaths among pedal cyclists — bicyclists or any other vehicle propelled by human-powered pedals — doubled, rising from seven in 2024 to 14 in 2025.
That marks the most cyclist traffic deaths in a single year since 2006, when there were four, according to UNM.
That statistic didn’t get much airtime at a meeting of the Transportation Infrastructure Revenue Subcommittee on Tuesday and appeared nowhere in a news release issued two days later announcing the decline in pedestrian fatalities.
Cyclist deaths on or near roadways in New Mexico and nationwide are vastly outnumbered by pedestrian deaths, accounting for just 3% of the 454 total traffic fatalities recorded in New Mexico last year.
But while pedestrian deaths are on the decline — with the Governors Highway Safety Association noting an 11% dip in such deaths nationwide — fatalities among cyclists are on the rise in many American cities.
According to the National Safety Council, the “number of preventable deaths from bicycle transportation incidents (in the U.S.) increased by 1% in 2024 and 37% in the last 10 years (from 1,015 in 2015 to 1,392 in 2024).”
The 14 deaths logged in 2025 in New Mexico are more than double the average of the roughly 6.5 cyclist deaths recorded in the state each year since 2006.
While cyclist deaths have fluctuated in that time, the average number of these fatalities rose to 7.7 deaths per year in the last 10 years versus 5.5 deaths in the previous decade.
Dan Majewski, who regularly bikes to work in Downtown Albuquerque, knows which roads to take and which to avoid, giving preference to streets with wider shoulders and designated bike lanes.
With more deaths among cyclists reported in the state every year, he understands why some people choose to ride outside New Mexico’s metro areas or don’t pick up the sport at all.
“I think there’s a big barrier to getting started riding,” he said. “You have to kind of learn through doing. There’s signage out there, and the city certainly tries. But you have to plan it out, you know?”
Several bicyclist traffic deaths have made headlines in New Mexico in recent years.
In May 2024, an 11-year-old boy was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly intentionally hitting and killing a physicist named Michael Habermehl, who was riding to work on an e-bike.
A year and a half later, Santa Fe resident Steven Ballinger was struck by a pickup truck driver and later died in a hospital.
In July 2025, 19-year-old Albuquerque cyclist Kayla VanLandingham was struck and killed at a bike crossing on Carlisle.
Just over a month ago, 47-year-old Robert Montoya was also hit and killed while riding to work on an e-bike just north of Interstate 40 in Northeast Albuquerque, which consistently logs about half of all cyclist deaths in the state.
Majewski previously sat on the board for BikeABQ, a safety advocate organization founded in 1999 to raise awareness of bicyclists on the state’s roadways, which officials have worked to make safer in recent years.
Legislators in 2023 passed House Memorial 85, titled “Target Zero,” which aims to achieve an annual traffic safety record of zero vehicle-related deaths or serious injuries by the end of the decade.
In March, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed new legislation requiring student drivers to take at least three hours of training on “vulnerable road users,” such as bicyclists, pedestrians and emergency service providers.
The 2023 resolution committed NMDOT to following a national model called Complete Streets, which recommends roadway projects consider multimodal forms of transportation and road “equity.”
Some cyclists say reinforcing legislation will be necessary to give it teeth.
Carl Colonius, a longtime cyclist, Taos resident and program manager for the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division, is one of them.
He illustrated the problem with a recent example south of Taos.
“You know the road that goes down through Llano Quemado by the water treatment plant toward the golf course?” he said. “That road was just repaved, beautifully done, but it doesn’t have a shoulder because that’s not a sensitivity a lot of public works directors in New Mexico have. Why would you waste 10% of your project building a shoulder? Biking and walking are not something they necessarily recognize.”
Recently, Colonius went on a ride with Graveleros, a spring and summertime biking meetup that Mason started in Las Cruces, one of several cities developing a municipal trail system to give cyclists safer routes to ride.
“There’s a wide age range, culture, gender, type of bike,” Colonius said of the experience. “So you’ve got hardcore road bikers who show up in their lycra with a matching kit, to the dude on a cruiser wearing cut-off overalls who has a basket for his cat.”
The group is a kind of microcosm for the wider New Mexico cycling community. Stories of close calls with drivers, collisions and chilling stories of final rides that ended fatally — with a white-painted bike marking the spot — remain a dark trope here and among other cycling enthusiasts throughout the state.
As of last month, UNM reported that five pedal cyclists have died so far in New Mexico in 2026.
“I don’t like to say it because I don’t want to discourage people from riding,” Mason said. “But in my mind, I sort of say that every car that passes me when I’m riding on the road could be the one that kills me. I try to keep that number as close to zero as possible while still getting where I want to go.”
USDOJ sues NM Supreme Court, alleging spouse of Air Force major illegally denied NM law license
—Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The United States Justice Department on Thursday filed a lawsuit against New Mexico’s top court and the body that licenses lawyers in the state for allegedly violating federal law by not granting law licenses to the spouses of military servicemembers transferred to New Mexico.
The lawsuit against the New Mexico Supreme Court and the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners centers around Liam Lees, whose wife, an Air Force major, was transferred to Holloman Air Force Base from Virginia in April of 2024.
Lees, who is licensed to practice law in Texas, Washington and Maryland, applied for a law license in New Mexico after being hired as a trial attorney at the Doña Ana County District Attorney’s Office. The New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners told him he did not qualify for a license, because he only held a Master of Laws degree from William and Mary Law School in Virginia.
State rules require a juris doctorate or equivalent and specify that a Master of Laws, a postgraduate degree, does not by itself make an applicant eligible to practice law in the state.
Lees sought a waiver to that rule from the Supreme Court, which denied him on a 3-2 vote. As a result, he became a law clerk at the district attorney’s office, earning a much lower salary, according to the lawsuit.
Lees could not be reached for comment. An automatic reply to his email address at the Doña Ana County District Attorney’s Office noted that he had stopped working at the office in late March.
Later, Lees learned that he could receive a separate waiver as the spouse of a military member transferred to New Mexico, based on a 2024 change to the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act intended to help attorney spouses of military members maintain employment amid regular transfers between bases.
But the lawsuit alleges New Mexico’s Board of Bar Examiners and Supreme Court failed to honor that waiver and grant him a license, even after the United States Attorney’s Office weighed in via several letters on Lees’ behalf.
The lawsuit alleges that New Mexico failed to adhere to federal law in Lees’ case and also that the state has a “pattern and practice” of imposing unnecessary and illegal burdens on military spouses, including transcripts and test scores.
The lawsuit does not specify how many other military spouses may have illegally been denied licenses.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison, in a statement Thursday announcing the lawsuit, noted that New Mexico houses four major military bases and more than 14,000 servicemembers. Keeping them here requires accommodating their spouses, he said.
“Spousal unemployment is a leading cause of servicemembers leaving military service and is a significant readiness and retention issue,” he said. “This lawsuit highlights the fact that license portability is a critical tool for our military spouses to be able to earn a living in the manner of their choosing.”
But Mark Baker, the attorney representing New Mexico in the lawsuit, said in a statement to Source NM that the DOJ is getting in the way of New Mexico’s right to determine who is fit to practice law in the state.
“This lawsuit by the federal government threatens to dismantle protections for the people of New Mexico that ensure they receive professional legal services from attorneys of good ethical and moral character,” he said.
He added that the Supreme Court “welcomes military spouses to practice law in our state,” and noted that one such military spouse has received a law license through the state’s existing process.
“We have full confidence that the federal judicial system will fairly resolve this dispute and determine that the lawsuit’s claims lack merit,” he said.
DOH says stop using infant formula that’s been linked to botulism — Daniel Montaño
State officials are urging residents to stop using an infant formula that has been recalled after being linked to three cases of infant botulism across the country.
A nationwide recall of Nara Organics’ Whole Milk Organic Infant Formula was announced Saturday June 13 after being linked to cases of infant botulism in California, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Although officials said no infant botulism cases have been reported here, the New Mexico Department of Health made an announcement Monday urging residents to stop using the Nara Organics formula immediately, but officials say not to throw it away.
If an infant develops botulism, NMDOH may want to test the formula. Officials said to take a picture, and record the lot number and use by date. Seal it and store it in a safe place away from other food items. If no symptoms develop after a month, it can be thrown away.
Nara Organics is sold nationally at Target and Target.com, and at nara.com.
NMDOH Deputy State Epidemiologist, Dr. Chad Smelser said botulism is a rare disease that causes difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis and even death. He says it can quickly become a medical emergency.
Botulism in infants can take a couple of weeks to develop symptoms like constipation, difficulty swallowing, or a loss of head control leading to what's known as a “floppy baby” appearance.
Parents with non-urgent questions can call the NMDOH helpline or text questions to 66364.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Lovelace Health System cuts dozens of roles, citing ‘challenging policy environment’
—Keelin Fisher, Albuquerque Journal
Lovelace Health System cut 43 employees from its workforce on Wednesday, citing increased costs and what officials describe as a “challenging policy environment.”
A spokesperson said the eliminated positions make up nearly 2% of the local workforce and primarily consist of administrative and support roles. The decision was made to ensure the organization’s structure “keeps pace with current realities,” the spokesperson, Whitney Wells, wrote in an email.
Wells did not elaborate on the reason for the layoffs but said the move would not affect patient care. She said the health system is “supporting affected team members through this transition,” adding that Lovelace will place some affected staff into other open roles.
“These are difficult decisions, and we don’t take them lightly,” Wells said.
The Lovelace layoffs come just eight days after Presbyterian Healthcare Services, New Mexico’s largest health system, cut 150 administrative roles and most of its Medicare Advantage plans, which its CEO Rishi Sikka said would void about $59 million in annual losses. Presbyterian officials said the decision was made to preserve its status as an independent healthcare provider.
The cuts also follow a new four-year deal reached between Lovelace and Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico in late May, which helped avert coverage disruption for thousands of patients just days before a previous agreement was set to expire.
Inmate dies in Tierra Amarilla Detention Center
—Rio Grande Sun
In Rio Arriba County, The Rio Grande Sun reports that an inmate at the Tierra Amarilla Detention Center died in late April.
44-year-old Joey Rodriguez, of Velarde, died on April 26, one day after being booked into the facility from undetermined causes. The Sun reports the man complained of methadone withdrawal.
Rodriguez had been jailed on charges of child abuse, aggravated battery on a household member and false imprisonment.
The Sun reports the death is being investigated by the state Office of the Medical Investigator.