{"id":41816,"date":"2022-03-07T15:14:33","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T22:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-court-grand-juries-cant-challenge-covid-orders\/"},"modified":"2022-03-07T22:14:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T22:14:33","slug":"new-mexico-court-grand-juries-cant-challenge-covid-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-court-grand-juries-cant-challenge-covid-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico court: Grand juries can\u2019t challenge COVID orders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=d3a9dd14-f309-558c-99b3-6d42d11e98ed&#038;function=cover&#038;type=preview&#038;source=false&#038;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signs one of a suite of education bills that will increase teacher salaries and benefits on Tuesday in Santa Fe. Lujan Grisham signed the bills near the playground of the Francis X. Nava Elementary School alongside grade school students, legislative leaders, and teacher union representatives (Cedar Attanasio\/Associated Press)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signs one of a suite of education bills that will increase teacher salaries and benefits on Tuesday in Santa Fe. Lujan Grisham signed the bills near the playground of the Francis X. Nava Elementary School alongside grade school students, legislative leaders, and teacher union representatives (Cedar Attanasio\/Associated Press)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Cedar Attanasio<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SANTA FE \u2013 New Mexico\u2019s Supreme Court ruled Monday that citizens can\u2019t convene grand juries to investigate the governor\u2019s response to COVID-19 because her actions were lawful and within the scope of her authority.<\/p>\n<p>The unanimous order by the five-member court scuttles three grand jury petitions in the politically conservative southeastern corner of the state against Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. The justices also ordered district courts to deny any similar petitions as they are filed.<\/p>\n<p>In the response to the pandemic, the Democratic governor has pursued aggressive emergency public health orders that restricted nonessential business, imposed extended mask mandates and enabled many public schools to suspend classroom teaching for a year or more. The orders withstood multiple legal challenges.<\/p>\n<p>New Mexico is one of six states that allows citizens to convene grand jury investigations directly. But the grand jury petitions against Lujan Grisham were dismissed on face value because the state\u2019s pandemic response was legally valid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis court previously has held that (the governor) acted lawfully and within the scope of her executive authority when she declared a public health emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d the court wrote in a unanimous order. Any other grand jury petitions \u201cbased on substantially similar petitions should be denied as facially invalid because they describe only lawful, noncriminal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The governor\u2019s complaint noted that it was difficult for her to determine how many grand jury petitions had been filed or to respond because the proceedings are sealed and confidential.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court responded by directing a judicial committee to consider possible rule changes that would give notice to a public official who is the target of a grand jury petition and allow the official to intervene in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signs one of a suite of education bills that will increase teacher salaries and benefits on Tuesday in Santa Fe. Lujan Grisham signed the bills near the playground of the Francis X. Nava Elementary School alongside grade school students, legislative leaders, and teacher union representatives (Cedar Attanasio\/Associated Press)Cedar Attanasio SANTA FE [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41816"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}