Former WNMU president moves to dismiss state's lawsuit
Feb. 20—Western New Mexico University's former president is asking a court to dismiss a lawsuit by the state Department of Justice targeting his lucrative severance package.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez challenged the severance agreement approved by WNMU regents on Dec. 20, which included a $1.9 million payment on top of a faculty appointment paying $200,000 annually with an eight-month sabbatical. The complaint alleges that the board of regents, most of whom subsequently resigned at Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's request, negotiated the agreement in violation of New Mexico's open meetings law. Torrez is asking a judge to void the contract and reclaim the money, arguing that Shepard and the regents breached their fiduciary duties in handling public funds. The complaint alleges that the contract is "unconscionable" under the law and also violates the New Mexico Constitution's anti-donation clause.
Shepard retorted Wednesday with a motion to dismiss the suit, accusing the attorney general of overreach, calling the lawsuit "a transparent effort to substitute its own views about the best interests of Western New Mexico University ... for those of the Board. While NMDOJ has many responsibilities, managing the University's financial affairs is not one of them."
The motion further argues that Shepard had no fiduciary responsibility in negotiating his severance, which followed his announcement in December that he would resign amid increasing scrutiny of lavish spending at the university, located in Silver City. The controversy has prompted inquiries from the Office of the State Auditor as well as the State Ethics Commission.
Shepard's motion argues that he and the former regents negotiated lawfully.
"No amount of spin from Joseph Shepard's crisis communications consultants or his high-priced legal team is going to deter the New Mexico Department of Justice from holding him accountable for abusing the public trust and misusing taxpayer money," Torrez said in a written statement. "He may have convinced his pals on the Board of Regents at Western New Mexico University to hand him a golden parachute, but we intend to use every available resource to recover funds that should have gone towards supporting the teachers, staff and students at that institution. We look forward to responding to this filing and having our day in court."
In a separate filing, former regents Mary Hotvedt, Daniel Lopez, Dal Mollenberg filed a response to Torrez's complaint on Wednesday, along with student regent Trent Jones. Lujan Grisham asked the entire board, a body appointed by the governor, to step down Dec. 31 after the severance agreement prompted criticism and outrage. Jones subsequently rescinded his resignation, according to court documents.
The regents denied they or Shepard had breached their fiduciary responsibilities and argued the Department of Justice cannot challenge the validity of the contract since it is not a party to it and the regents have the authority to manage and govern the university. The former regents said they can no longer be sued in an official capacity nor be held personally liable.
A joint resolution seeking constitutional changes specifying university boards' fiduciary duties and a legal path to remove regents passed its second legislative committee Wednesday. It moves next to the state House of Representatives for a vote.
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When the Trump administration announced in April that it was dismissing the Department of Justice's decades-long effort to desegregate the Plaquemines Parish School District in Louisiana, the state's Republicans rejoiced. 'For years, federal judges have imposed unnecessary requirements that have cost our schools and our children tens of millions of dollars,' Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said in a press release. 'Educational decisions should be made at the most local level and not by unelected, activist federal judges.' In 1966, the DOJ sued Plaquemines in order to force the school district to racially integrate its schools. The court order required the district to bus Black children to all-white schools and banned it from discriminating against students or teachers on the basis of race. It was just one of many court orders that came in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court case that found that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. Though nationwide desegregation efforts proved to be a boon for Black student success and didn't harm white students, Republicans said the Louisiana order amounted to an imposition on local lawmakers and educators. The federal government now seemingly agrees, framing the 60-year-old mandate as a 'historical wrong.' 'Louisiana got its act together decades ago, and it is past time to acknowledge how far we have come,' Leo Terrell, senior counsel at the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. 'America is back, and this Department of Justice is making sure the Civil Rights Division is correcting wrongs from the past and working for all Americans.' More than 100 U.S. schools are still under similar court orders to desegregate, and the Trump administration is reportedly considering dismissing more orders. The Justice Department did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment on ending desegregation orders. HuffPost is committed to fearlessly covering the Trump administration. and become a member today. President Donald Trump's second term has been predicated on punishing his enemies and reshaping the country to reward the biggest promoters of white grievances. For conservatives, it's the perfect time to relitigate the idea that schools should be equal and accessible to kids of all identities. Ending these court orders is just one tactic experts say the administration is likely to use to further that goal. By threatening public schools with diversity initiatives, promoting 'school choice,' attacking efforts to make school discipline less racist and doing whatever he can to dismantle the Department of Education, Trump is on a path to make our modern school segregation problem worse. 'Certainly, the Trump administration is likely going to accelerate a process that's been going on for a while,' Sean Reardon, an education researcher and sociology professor at Stanford University, told HuffPost. American schools are already more segregated today than they were at the end of the last century. Throughout the 1960s, the Department of Justice adopted a strategy of suing school boards to force them to comply with Brown v. Board. These orders required schools to stop discriminating based on race and to allow Black students to enroll in previously all-white schools. Once schools could prove that they were no longer discriminating against Black students, the DOJ would dismiss their cases. Scholars agree that the orders helped with racial integration, even though federal courts never explicitly defined what, exactly, would determine if a school had satisfied an order. Graduation rates among Black students increased after schools were ordered to desegregate, as did their test scores, Rucker Johnson, a University of California, Berkeley economics professor, wrote in his 2019 book 'Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works.' Research from the National Coalition on School Diversity also shows that students of all races who attend racially diverse schools perform better academically and have better health and earnings outcomes in adulthood. But between 1991 and 2009, the DOJ dropped 200 court orders — and in every instance, segregation began to slowly increase. Part of the issue is that school districts are based on neighborhoods, and many residential areas remain segregated thanks to federal policies from the 1950s and 1960s that precluded people of color from buying homes in certain communities. School desegregation peaked in the U.S. by the 1980s, Reardon said, and then started to reverse. 'The country wasn't so focused on racial inequality and segregation,' Reardon said. 'I think there was some fatigue with the efforts.' In the 1990s, the Supreme Court issued several rulings that made it easier for schools to be released from their required desegregation plans. This was followed by George W. Bush's DOJ encouraging schools to seek the dismissal of these orders. The number of dismissals dramatically increased between 2000 and 2007, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Only a handful of researchers have looked at the complete data on school segregation and what happened after the Department of Justice began ordering districts to integrate. But Reardon and other Stanford researchers found that once schools were released from their court orders, they became more segregated over the next decade. Between 2012 and 2022, the percentage of white students attending public schools dropped from 51% to 44%. And in the fall of 2022, 42% of white children attended schools where at least three-quarters of students were white, according to Department of Education data. By contrast, only 30% of Hispanic students and 21% of Black students attended schools where their racial or ethnic group made up three-quarters or more of the student population. The decades when the DOJ was actively ensuring school districts were desegregated made it clear that intervention from the federal government was crucial to ensure equal and racially diverse public schools. But this administration has instead supported policies that will exacerbate segregation. Trump's dizzying array of education policies is unprecedented. While other Republican administrations have criticized the federal government's role in public schools and championed right-wing school policies like taxpayer-funded vouchers, no modern president before him has explicitly called for the end of diversity initiatives and targeted schools that have programs designed to ensure equal access for all students. 'There are just so many ways in which the actions the administration is taking are already exacerbating segregation and are going to make it worse,' Katrina Feldkamp, a senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, told HuffPost. Schools have become a focal point for right-wing activists and Republican politicians looking to implement a conservative agenda nationwide. Their movement has manifested itself as a fight against the promise of a multiracial democracy that includes racially integrated and equitably funded schools. Conservatives have also attacked LGBTQ+ groups, especially trans children, and immigrant kids. The Trump administration has meanwhile been promoting so-called school choice, the idea that parents should be able to send their kids to charter schools and private institutions at taxpayer expense. 'In celebrating the pivotal role that charter schools play to deliver high-quality options for students and families, I'm excited to share that the Trump Administration is making historic investments in the Charter Schools Program,' Secretary of Education Linda McMahonsaid last month in a press release. 'Not only are we proposing a future $60 million increase in the program budget, but we are also dedicating an additional $60 million in this year's funding.' Deemphasizing public schools could have significant repercussions for some students. 'The administration's focus on school choice and vouchers poses a real threat here,' Feldkamp said. School choice, she said, 'was originally implemented as a way to help white families who are opposed to desegregation flee public schools and create their own segregation academies.' 'We are sort of now seeing that play out here as there is a rush to give students 'school choice,'' Feldkamp added. After the Brown v. Board decision, conservative government officials in the South provided school vouchers to white parents to send their children to private schools so they could avoid going to school with Black children. The meaning of school choice has evolved over time — the first charter school didn't begin operating until 1991 — but the result is often the same. Research shows that charter schools make segregation worse. 'We've seen that in districts where the number of charter schools have grown, so has segregation,' Reardon said. 'That's partly because charter schools operate outside of any school district efforts to create integrated schools.' 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