Randy Cummings, et al. v. Celina Bussey, et al.

For purposes of the qualified immunity defense to a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action, this Court has determined that “government officials performing discretionary functions”—as opposed to purely ministerial tasks— “generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known . . . .” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Thus began the “ministerial exception” to qualified immunity. The Supreme Court of the State of New Mexico has determined that certain 2009 amendments to the New Mexico “Little Davis-Bacon Act” imposed on the relevant state officials a “mandatory, non-discretionary duty” to set prevailing wages for public works projects at the level set forth in collective bargaining agreements, and that doing so was purely a ministerial act. N.M. Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council v. Dean, 353 P.3d 1212, 1218 (N.M. 2015). The decision below, however, interpreted the same state law provisions as the New Mexico Supreme Court and concluded the opposite; it found that those statutes granted discretion to the administrative agency to set wage rates for public works projects. Thus, it found that the “ministerial exception” to qualified immunity did not apply and that the law was not “clearly established” at the time Defendants failed to follow the state law provisions. The questions presented by this petition are: 1. Whether a federal court interpreting a state statute can conclude that it grants the state agency discretion such that the “ministerial exception” to