NM Supreme Court censures attorney who opposed COVID restrictions

State Supreme Court justices this week censured a Santa Fe attorney who they said violated professional rules in her defiant stand against state-ordered COVID-19 restrictions.

Nancy Ana Garner filed court pleadings in 2021 that repeatedly referred to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham as a “tyrant” and disparaged judges, lawmakers and fellow attorneys, justices said in a public censure issued Monday.

Garner violated professional rules for lawyers by “her offensive remarks, false statements, and meritless claims made in court pleadings regarding judges and state officials,” the unanimous five-member court found.

Garner did not respond this week to phone messages seeking comment.

The Supreme Court in September deferred a one-year suspension barring Garner from practicing law on the condition she comply with rules of professional behavior for attorneys.

Justices also rebuked Garner for putting her interests above those of her clients, finding that her “inflammatory and misleading statements” harmed her clients, including employees of Sandia National Laboratories who challenged the lab’s COVID-19 policies.

Garner made headlines in 2021 for representing an Albuquerque restaurant that defied city- and state-ordered COVID-19 health rules by failing to require employees to wear face coverings.

State District Judge Nancy Franchini in September 2021 ordered gas, water and electricity shut off at the the Backstreet Grill in Old Town after it remained open after the judge ordered the restaurant to cease operations.

Justices chastised Garner for a response she filed in the case in August 2021 titled, “My right to disqualify any judge who allowed themselves to be injected with experimental gene therapy.”

She argued that the Backstreet Grill refused to “be the Nazi brownshirt enforcing any of the tyrant’s latest rules,” apparently in reference to Lujan Grisham, by forcing employees to wear a “face-diaper.”

She referred to the city’s attorney as an “unethical opponent” and state lawmakers as “spineless tools,” justices wrote.

Garner also wrote that the state Supreme Court justices “are blind or, alternatively, by their practice of medicine in all of our courts, which is what their latest COVID-crap to come out of them is,” court records show.

Garner did not contest that her conduct violated the state’s rules for professional conduct, according to the censure.