New Mexico Disability Discrimination Laws

Employers must provide reasonable accommodations to employees and applicants who are identified as having physical or mental handicaps or serious medical conditions, unless these accommodations would impose undue hardship on employers.

Reasonable accommodation means a modification or adaptation of the work environment, schedule, rules, or job responsibilities that does not impose an undue hardship on the employer and, effective May 20, 2020, is reached through good faith efforts to explore less restrictive or less expensive alternatives to enable an employee to perform essential job functions.

Undue hardship (effective May 20, 2020) means an accommodation requiring significant difficulty or expense when considering:

• the nature and cost of the accommodation;
• the employer’s financial resources involved in providing the accommodation;
• the number of the employer’s employees;
• the effect of the accommodation on expenses and resources;
• the impact of the accommodation on the employer’s business;
• the employer’s overall financial resources;
• the overall size of the employer with respect to the number, type, and location of its facilities;
• the type of operation of the employer, including the composition, structure, and functions of the employer’s workforce; or
• the geographic separateness or administrative or fiscal relationship to employer of the employer’s facilities.

N.M. Stat. Ann. § 28-1-2 (2020 N.M. Laws 49 (H.B. 25)); N.M. Code R. § 9.1.1.7

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Under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers, including state and local governments, with 15 or more employees, are prohibited from discriminating against people with disabilities. Title I protects qualified individuals with disabilities in several areas, including job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation and job training. It is also unlawful to retaliate against someone for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on disability, or for filing an ADA discrimination charge. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) shares enforcement authority for Title I of the ADA with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which has primary responsibility for enforcing the employment provisions of the law. (Note: Federal employees and job applicants are covered by Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 instead of the ADA.