Angelo Artuso

NM Supreme Court: State has authority to limit indoor dining

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Once again, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the state when it came to upholding and enforcing the state public health order, this time saying not only does the state Department of Health have the authority to close or restrict indoor dining at restaurants, but that their decision to do so was not arbitrary and capricious, as argued by some restaurants. “It is the policy of courts to uphold regulations intended to protect public health unless it is plain they have no real relation to the object to which they were enacted,” Justice Judith Nakamura said in announcing the decision. Citing a 1939 decision, State v. Old Abe, Nakamura said, “Only agency action that is willful and unreasoning and done without consideration and in disregard to the facts and circumstances can be deemed arbitrary and capricious.”

The court will issue a written order at a later date. Chief Justice Michael Vigil recused himself from the case. Nakamura also said the court ordered the lower court that issued a temporary restraining order that allowed indoor dining to resume—which itself was stayed by the Supreme Court to allow the ban on indoor dining to continue—to vacate that order.

2017 Legislative Session

Effort to make college research secret stalls over fears it goes too far

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Angelo Artuso warns that a move by lawmakers to shield some university research from the public eye could lead to harrowing consequences. At a Wednesday morning House committee hearing, Artuso invoked some of history’s darkest state-sanctioned university research projects. For decades, researchers at Tuskegee University studied the effects of syphilis by pretending to offer infected Black men free health care. And several colleges and universities from the early 1950s until 1973 were involved in Project MKUltra, a CIA program that used drugs like LSD unknowingly on human subjects to experiment with mind control. Programs like those, involving government-funded atrocities at institutions of higher learning,  Artuso maintained, would remain hidden at New Mexico public higher education institutions under a bill sponsored by state Reps.