CATO Backs Romero's Real ID Rebuttal

This case asks whether the State of New Mexico’s actions enabling pollution from oil and gas extraction, and its failure to control that pollution, violate the New Mexico Constitution’s Pollution Control Clause, Inherent Rights Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. Our brief urges the New Mexico Supreme Court to answer those questions by retiring its “interstitial approach” to state constitutional interpretation—which looks first to federal doctrine when interpreting state constitutional provisions that arguably have U.S. Constitutional analogues—and instead interpreting the New Mexico Constitution holistically and independently. This independent approach, we explain, will ensure that New Mexicans can enjoy—and enforce—the rights guaranteed to them in their unique founding document.

From blocking unconstitutional orders to mobilizing millions, here’s how we fought back and what comes next.

President Donald Trump is threatening to invoke the act, which is a rarely used power that Congress intended only for extreme emergencies. We break down what this means for our civil liberties.

This case asks whether government officials who intentionally violate the law are immune from damages suits under a state statute governing such suits, and if so, whether the statute itself violates the Open Courts Clause of the Utah Constitution. Utah’s Open Courts Clause, like similar provisions in thirty-nine other states across the country, protects an individual’s right to seek judicial remedies for wrongs committed against them. It therefore serves as an important tool that does not exist in the U.S. Constitution to hold government actors accountable.