SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO – Civil rights attorneys are asking a state court to force New Mexico education officials to come up with a plan to address longstanding deficiencies in the state’s K-12 public education system.
MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund), Munger, Tolles & Olson, LLC, and other attorneys representing plaintiffs in the consolidated lawsuit Yazzie v. State of New Mexico and Martinez v. State of New Mexico filed the motion on September 4 in the First Judicial District Court. Attorneys argue the state failed to comply with a 2019 court order to ensure that public schools have the resources to give students from low-income homes, English learner students, and students with disabilities a sufficient education as required by the state’s constitution. Latino students make up significant portions of each of these three groups whom New Mexico has failed.
In 2014, two groups of parents and six school districts filed two separate lawsuits – Martinez v. New Mexico and Yazzie v. New Mexico – challenging the state’s arbitrary and inadequate funding of public schools. The lawsuits, which were consolidated in 2015, argued the state had failed to provide students with the programs and services needed to prepare them for college and career. The lawsuits, the first of their kind in the state, alleged that the lack of necessary monitoring and oversight deprived students of the resources required for them to succeed.
In 2014, New Mexico sought to dismiss the Martinez case. MALDEF and other attorneys representing the plaintiffs in Martinez argued then that the state’s education system violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the New Mexico Constitution by denying equal treatment and a sufficient education to economically disadvantaged, English learner students and students with disabilities. In a historic decision, the court rejected the motion to dismiss the Martinez complaint and ruled for the first time that education is a fundamental right under the New Mexico Constitution.
In July 2018, the court agreed that the state’s education system had violated its constitutional requirement to deliver a “sufficient and uniform” public education and ordered the state to begin taking steps to rectify the deficiencies. In 2019, the court entered its final judgment, ordering the state of New Mexico to provide a constitutionally sufficient public education.
“The New Mexico Public Education Department has not followed the court’s orders and continues to fail English learner students, students from low-income households, and students with disabilities,” said Ernest Herrera, Western Regional Counsel for MALDEF. “MALDEF learned through depositions and recent data on student performance that NMPED has not improved its monitoring and support of school districts since the public school system was on trial in 2017.”
Since then, attorneys argue in the new motion, state education officials have made only “piecemeal” efforts to comply with the court’s order to implement a plan to resolve the deficiencies. Attorneys argue that because of the state’s lack of action, New Mexico students have fallen even further behind. According to data collected by a state legislative commission on education cited in the complaint, New Mexico students perform below national averages in math, reading and science, and one-fourth of all students do not finish high school.
In the motion, attorneys request that the court order the state and its education department to develop a comprehensive remedial plan to comply with the previous court order and the state’s constitution. Additionally, attorneys are asking that a bipartisan, bicameral committee of the state’s legislature lead the development of the plan with the goal of compliance by the end of 2030.
The motion was not opposed by the State of New Mexico, which the New Mexico Attorney General represents.
Read the motion HERE.
Read a timeline of the case HERE.