I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Representatives of two nonprofits on the winning end of a federal judge’s ruling three weeks ago reacted Monday to news that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King plans to appeal the decision.
The Aug. 3 ruling by Judge Judith Herrera that King wants overturned said that the state had incorrectly demanded that New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO) and the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) register with the state as political committees. The effect of such an action would have been that the two nonprofit organizations would have had to disclose their donors. Federal law oversees nonprofits and does not require them to disclose the vast majority of their donors.
Matt Brix, policy director for the Albuquerque-based Center for Civic Policy, which sponsors NMYO, said, “It’s unfortunate Attorney General Gary King – the top attorney in the state – refuses to acknowledge that the First Amendment applies the same in New Mexico as it does in the other forty-nine states. Attorney General King’s actions spell trouble for all New Mexicans who care about free speech.”
A spokesman for SWOP also reacted to King’s decision.
“The Attorney General’s actions also spell trouble for all New Mexico taxpayers who are concerned about the waste of literally hundreds of thousands of additional dollars on irresponsible and pointless litigation,” said SWOP’s communications director George Lujan.
King’s office maintains that the two nonprofits stepped over a line between educating voters, which nonprofits can do, into electioneering, that is, injecting themselves into an election, which nonprofits cannot do. The state says the nonprofits did that with 2008 mailers they paid for that were critical of state lawmakers.
Herrera ruled that the state of New Mexico had not proved that the nonprofits had stepped over the line. The judge found that the mailings were not “unambiguously campaign-related” using a complicated analysis touching on several U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Therefore, she wrote, the nonprofits were not subject to a state law that would have required the nonprofits to register as a political committee.
