Atencio v. State

The New Mexico Court of Appeals ordered the dismissal of claims under the New Mexico Constitution that the State’s system for regulating pollution from oil and natural gas violated the plaintiffs’ rights. The plaintiffs were individuals who lived or worked in close proximity to the San Juan and Permian Basins in the northwest and southeast regions of the state where oil and gas extraction occurs or who had “significant cultural, ancestral, and religious ties” to those regions, as well as “various advocacy groups representing populations particularly affected by climate change such as youths, Indigenous communities, and other grouped individuals living and working in the San Juan and Permian Basins.” The defendants were the State of New Mexico, its legislature and governor, and various executive agencies and officials. The court held that the Constitution’s Pollution Control Clause did not contain an enforceable right to be free from a given amount of pollution or create an enforceable right “to a beautiful and healthful environment.” The court further concluded that judicial resolution of a claim under the Pollution Control Clause would violate separation of powers as well as the “merely persuasive” political question doctrine. In addition, the court found that the plaintiffs could not state a due process claim because neither the federal nor the New Mexico Constitution recognize an individual right to environmental protection that would support such a claim. The court also found the plaintiffs did not state a viable equal protection claim because they did not allege a classification that resulted in discriminatory treatment. The court said their allegations of discriminatory treatment amounted to “incidental harms based on the geographic location of individuals.” One judge concurred, writing that while she agreed that the Pollution Control Clause did not create an individual or enforceable right, she was hesitant “to foreclose the possibility that [it] creates any right at all.”