New Mexico
State won’t deny law licenses over immigration status
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico will no longer deny licenses to practice law solely because of an applicant’s citizenship or immigration status, including some aspiring law students who arrived in the U.S. as children and don’t have a clear path to citizenship.
Announced Monday, the rule change from the New Mexico Supreme Court is scheduled to take effect Oct. 1. Several states already have provisions that disregard residency or immigration status in licensure decisions.
“The change in the licensure rule is grounded in the fundamental principle of fairness, and is consistent with New Mexico’s historical values of inclusion and diversity,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Shannon Bacon said in a statement Tuesday.
She said the shift aligns New Mexico with recommendations by the American Bar Association and provisions in at least eight other states that provide attorney licensing to some immigrants. All applicants are still required to graduate from law school, pass the bar exam and undergo further character vetting by a board of bar examiners.
The rulemaking drew immediate criticism from state Republican Party Chairman Steve Pearce, as GOP candidates challenge two incumbent state Supreme Court justices in the November general election.
“This is a reckless decision,” Pearce said in a statement. “This latest rule will open our borders even more, and the court seems to relish making arbitrary decisions without thinking about consequences.”
New Mexico previously required applicants for a law license to provide proof of citizenship, permanent resident status or work authorization.
Since 2017, the state judiciary has licensed some candidates based on work authorizations linked to an Obama-era program that has prevented the deportation of thousands of people brought into the U.S. as children.
Advocates for immigrant communities say that arrangement was threatened by efforts to do away with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — ruled illegal by a federal judge in Texas last year with a stay pending appeal at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Jazmin Irazoqui-Ruiz, a senior attorney at the New Mexico Immigration Law Center, was the first in the state to qualify for a law license through work authorization under the DACA program. She said the changes do away with an arduous process and law licenses that came with a stipulation.
“Immigration status won’t be a barrier to obtaining your law license” now, said Irazoqui-Ruiz. “That opens up economic opportunity regardless of immigration status. ... It has an effect on family and community.”
Recent University of New Mexico Law School graduate Luis Leyva-Castillo said new rules lift away clouds of uncertainty as he awaits results of his law certification exam — a final major hurdle to receiving a license.
Leyva-Castillo says he immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico with family at age 8 and has relied on the DACA program to avoid removal as he earned a high school diploma at Ruidoso High School and two degrees from the University of New Mexico.
Now 25, he is preparing for work as a law clerk at the New Mexico Court of Appeals and said the licensing rule change “allows the state to use the immigrant community that we already have and integrate them into our workforce to prop up the economy. ... I think this really sends a message.”
Idaho
Court: Governor can deny clemency for condemned man
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Supreme Court says the governor has the authority to reject a parole board’s commutation recommendation for death row inmate Gerald Ross Pizzuto Jr.
The decision means the state can seek a death warrant for Pizzuto. Once issued, the warrant would set Pizzuto’s execution by lethal injection in the next 30 days.
Deborah A. Czuba, supervising attorney for the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Defenders of Idaho, said Pizzuto’s defense team was “disappointed and devastated” by the ruling. Czuba said she hopes Little takes a closer look at all the reasons the parole commission cited when it recommended clemency.
“Any aggressive pursuit of a death warrant at this point for Mr. Pizzuto would not only be barbaric, but also a clear waste of time, resources, and taxpayer money,” Czuba said in a press release. “We believe the Commission of Pardons and Parole made a compassionate and reasoned decision, and that there is still time for Gov. Little to take the wise and moral action to allow Mr. Pizzuto to die a natural death in prison.”
Pizzuto has spent more than three decades on death row after being convicted for the July 1985 slayings of two gold prospectors at a cabin north of McCall. His execution had been scheduled for June 2021, but he asked for clemency because he has terminal bladder cancer, heart disease, diabetes and decreased intellectual function.
The state’s Commission of Pardons and Parole voted 4-3 in December to recommend that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison, citing in part the torture and abuse that Pizzuto experienced as a child and his serious health problems. But Idaho Gov. Brad Little rejected that decision, saying the brutal nature of Pizzuto’s crimes merited the death sentence.
Little’s decision led to an appeal by Pizzuto’s public defense team, which claimed the Idaho Constitution did not give the governor the authority to override the recommendation of the parole commission. Pizzuto also said a state law allowing the governor to override the parole commission’s decision in some cases violates the state Constitution, and so shouldn’t apply. Pizzuto won the case at the lower court level, but the governor appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court.
In an opinion handed down Tuesday afternoon, a majority of justices on the high court said that the state laws and the Constitution are consistent, and noted that Idaho’s governor has historically played a significant role in the commutation process. A constitutional amendment passed in 1986 gave the Legislature the power to determine how the executive branch handles commutation power, the justices found.
Justice Joel Horton and Robin Brody wrote a special concurrence, saying that while they disagreed that the governor has the ability to approve or disapprove the commission’s recommendation, they still agreed with reversing the lower court’s opinion. Horton and Brody said the state law only gives the parole board the power to act in an advisory capacity when it comes to commuting death sentences, which is why the board recommends commutation rather than granting it directly.
