The state Supreme Court on Thursday issued a unanimous opinion it says reconciles conflicting rulings by the Court of Appeals regarding the state’s Whistleblower Protection Act.
Specifically, the new opinion says for a public employee to receive protection under the act, disclosures about wrong or illegal actions by a public employer must benefit the public in some way.
While case law is “sparse” regarding the Whistleblower Protection Act, the opinion says, the Appeals Court decision in the case of corrections officer Manuel Lerma conflicted with one of its earlier rulings, the state Supreme Court said, and too narrowly interpreted the law.
Lerna, who had 16 years’ experience with the New Mexico Corrections Department, transferred to a new facility where he guarded the prison’s sally port and ensured, as “safety protocol” that one side of the dual-gate system remained closed when the other was open. dual-gate system was to have one gate closed when opening the other gate as a “safety protocol.”
Lerna’s “strict” enforcement of this protocol led to “disagreement” between him and other transportation division corrections officers, who wanted him to leave both gates open “at the same time…so they could come and go as they pleased.” Lerna alleges that “one day while he was driving home from the prison, his vehicle ‘kept [being] block[ed]’ when it was sandwiched between two vehicles, each driven by a DOC employee, causing him to pull his vehicle over and stop in an...
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