Judge bans New Mexico militia blamed for protest violence

A New Mexico judge has outlawed a militia group blamed for sparking violence at a 2020 anti-statue demonstration where a protester was shot

The state flag of New Mexico flies outside the county court house in Grants, New Mexico, US, February 28, 2019. Picture taken February 28, 2019. REUTERS

A New Mexico judge has outlawed a militia group blamed for sparking violence at a 2020 anti-statue demonstration in the southwestern US state where a protester was shot.

The ruling came in response to what law experts called the country's first civil lawsuit by a district attorney seeking to protect the public from actions by vigilantes and citizen paramilitary groups.

The New Mexico Civil Guard (NMCG) was banned from operating as a military unit on grounds that only the state governor had the authority to activate a militia, District Court Judge Elaine Lujan ruled on Monday. The NMCG was also outlawed from acting as law enforcement at protests or demonstrations.

The group's heavily-armed members in June 2020 tried to keep protesters away from a statue of a Spanish colonial ruler in Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city. During ensuing violence a counter-protester unaffiliated with the group shot and injured a man calling for removal of the statue.

Bryce Provance, founder of the now disbanded NMCG, said the group tried to protect the community and prevent clashes.

"We saw ourselves as kind of a middle ground. We weren't for the right and we weren't for the left, because politics had become so extreme," Provance, 33, said of the ruling in which the group was also fined for failing to provide an attorney.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Raúl Torrez brought the lawsuit to protect the public from what he called untrained, armed "extremists" who tried to illegally function as the police or military and made an already tense situation worse.

"If we are going to remain a free and democratic society we must resist the impulse towards armed extremism," he said in a statement.

Torrez was helped by law professors from Georgetown University who said the ruling established that actions by vigilantes and militia groups, such as the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol, were not constitutionally protected.