Today we filed an Emergency Stay and Writ at the NM Supreme Court to demand due process in the Project Jupiter air permit hearing

Today we filed an emergency request with the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking a temporary stay and writ of mandamus to halt the New Mexico Environment Department’s (“NMED”) air-permit proceeding for Project Jupiter until the constitutional right to a fair hearing is protected. 

Our request does not ask the Supreme Court to decide whether Project Jupiter should receive an air permit. It is asking the Court to ensure that NMED provides opponents a meaningful opportunity to investigate the facts, prepare expert testimony, test the Applicant’s claims, and present our case before the State decides whether to authorize one of the largest industrial projects ever proposed in New Mexico.  

The Supreme Court filing challenges not one isolated ruling, but a series of reversals that, taken together, make meaningful participation in the air permit hearing virtually impossible - the Hearing Examiner setting an October 19 hearing and then reversing course, moving the date up to September 14th, twice authorizing discovery and then eliminating that right entirely, and then ordering developers to respond to our Motion regarding the lack of a gas pipeline to supply the project but reversing himself again just days later, ordering YGI and NMED not to answer the questions he had just determined warranted expedited briefing.

We also argued that because thousands of pages of NMED's administrative record would not be provided until August 24th - the same day our sworn technical testimony is due - experts will not be able to meaningfully review thousands of pages of technical material, determine its significance, evaluate and revise their analyses, or incorporate that analyses into sworn testimony.

Essentially our experts are being told to testify first and learn the facts later. If Project Jupiter suddenly unveils a new gas-supply plan, new engineering assumptions or new technical evidence, we are apparently expected to discover it at the hearing and cross-examine on the fly. That is not due process. It is trial by ambush.

Our Petition invokes the New Mexico Supreme Court’s mandamus authority, arguing that administrative agencies have a nondiscretionary obligation to administer the law and that extraordinary judicial intervention is appropriate where fundamental constitutional questions and the need for immediate resolution converge.  

Waiting for an ordinary appeal would provide no meaningful remedy. If the hearing proceeds, a permit is issued, and construction continues on the approximately 1,400-acre, multi-billion-dollar AI data-center campus, a successful appeal years later would be little more than a hollow victory.  

When the State proposes to authorize pollution on this unprecedented scale, the answer cannot be to rush the hearing, deny discovery, withhold the record until expert testimony is due, and postpone threshold questions until it is too late to investigate the answers. The bigger the project and the greater the consequences, the greater—not lesser—the obligation to follow the law.

NEE has asked the Supreme Court to enter an immediate temporary stay before opponents’ technical testimony is due and then issue a writ directing NMED and its Hearing Officer to comply with their constitutional, statutory, and regulatory obligations before the air-permit proceeding continues. 

Our Petition was accompanied by Declarations of Support from Santa Teresa resident Victor Mata, Representative Micaela Lara Cadena and Senators Carrie Hamblen and Liz Stefanics.