New Mexico Workplace Harassment Laws: 4-Employee Rule, 300 Days

Workplace harassment is unlawful in New Mexico under the New Mexico Human Rights Act, which bars an employer from discriminating "in matters of compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment" because of a protected trait (NMSA 1978, § 28-1-7(A)). The Act covers "any person employing four or more persons and any person acting for an employer" (§ 28-1-2(B)), and the New Mexico Supreme Court has held that it "prohibits all forms of employment sexual harassment, including quid pro quo and hostile work environment" (Ocana v. American Furniture Co., 2004-NMSC-018).

Complaints go to the Human Rights Bureau of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions within 300 days (§ 28-1-10(A)), and a separate statute, NMSA § 50-4-36, limits the confidentiality terms private employers can require on harassment claims. For other states, see workplace harassment laws by state.

Information last verified on 2026-10-20. This article has not been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers New Mexico state law on workplace harassment by employers, supervisors and coworkers under the New Mexico Human Rights Act (NMSA 1978, §§ 28-1-2, 28-1-7, 28-1-10, 28-1-13 and 28-1-14), with NMSA § 50-4-36 on settlement confidentiality and the New Mexico Supreme Court's decision in Ocana v. American Furniture Co. It does not cover wrongful firing or the full complaint and appeal procedure (see New Mexico wrongful termination), damages estimates, criminal harassment or stalking, harassment outside employment, or federal-employee procedure.

New Mexico harassment rules at a glance

What the Human Rights Act prohibits

Section 28-1-7(A) makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for:

"an employer, unless based on a bona fide occupational qualification or other statutory prohibition, to refuse to hire, to discharge, to promote or demote or to discriminate in matters of compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment against any person otherwise qualified because of race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, pregnancy, childbirth or condition related to pregnancy or childbirth, physical or mental disability, serious medical condition or military status, or, if the employer has fifty or more employees, spousal affiliation; provided, however, that 29 U.S.C. Section 631(c)(1) and (2) shall apply to discrimination based on age" (NMSA § 28-1-7(A))

The statute does not use the word harassment in its employment provisions and does not define a hostile work environment. That step comes from the courts. In Ocana v. American Furniture Co., 2004-NMSC-018, 135 N.M. 539, the New Mexico Supreme Court wrote:

"We believe that the NMHRA, which 'tracks the language of the federal Civil Rights Act,' ... also prohibits all forms of employment sexual harassment, including quid pro quo and hostile work environment."

The court described the federal test this way: "Under Title VII, sexual harassment is actionable under a hostile work environment theory when the offensive conduct becomes so severe and pervasive that it alters the conditions of employment in such a manner that the workplace is transformed into a hostile and abusive environment for the employee." That standard is case law, not statutory text, and Ocana concerned sexual harassment.

Which New Mexico employers are covered

Section 28-1-2(B) defines an employer as "any person employing four or more persons and any person acting for an employer." A "person" includes individuals, partnerships, corporations and other organizations, and "the state and all of its political subdivisions" (§ 28-1-2(A)), so public employers are covered on the same terms.

New Mexico has no separate, lower threshold for harassment. The four-person rule applies to harassment and to every other form of discrimination under the Act, with one exception: spousal affiliation is protected only "if the employer has fifty or more employees" (§ 28-1-7(A)).

"Employee" means "any person in the employ of an employer or an applicant for employment" (§ 28-1-2(E)), so job applicants are within the Act.

The federal threshold is higher. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defines an employer as a person with "fifteen or more employees for each working day in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year" (42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b)); the workplace harassment laws hub covers the federal layer.

Protected traits

Under § 28-1-7(A), an employer may not discriminate because of:

• Race, which "includes traits historically associated with race, including hair texture, length of hair, protective hairstyles or cultural or religious headdresses" (§ 28-1-2(Z))
• Color
• National origin and ancestry
• Religion
• Sex, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity
• Pregnancy, childbirth or a condition related to pregnancy or childbirth
• Physical or mental disability
• Serious medical condition
• Military status, which covers active membership in, or being a veteran of, the armed forces or state defense force, and includes a spouse or child of an active member or veteran (§ 28-1-2(EE))
• Age, with the proviso that 29 U.S.C. § 631(c)(1) and (2) apply to age discrimination
• Spousal affiliation, at employers with 50 or more employees

Employer responsibility and individual liability

Ocana set the rule for harassment by supervisors. The court adopted the federal framework: "employer liability will be presumed where there is actionable sexual harassment and the harassing employee has supervisory authority over the victimized employee. Where no tangible employment action has been taken against the employee, the employer may rebut the presumption by proving both elements of the affirmative defense. We adopt this standard for determining employer liability under the NMHRA."

On individuals, Section 28-1-7(I) makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for "any person or employer to: (1) aid, abet, incite, compel or coerce the doing of any unlawful discriminatory practice or to attempt to do so." Because "person" includes "one or more individuals" (§ 28-1-2(A)) and the employer definition includes "any person acting for an employer" (§ 28-1-2(B)), the Act's prohibitions are written to reach individuals as well as businesses. In Sonntag v. Shaw, 2001-NMSC-015, the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected "the proposition that there can exist no individual liability under the NMHRA," tracing that potential liability to the Act's bar on "any person" supporting a discriminatory practice, and held that "a plaintiff must exhaust his or her administrative remedies against a party before bringing an action in district court against that party." The plaintiff there could not hold the company's president personally liable because she named only the corporation in her complaint to the Division.

In Lobato v. New Mexico Environment Department, 2012-NMSC-002, the court repeated that the Act "requires administrative exhaustion against these individuals as a prerequisite to judicial remedies," but held that the Division's charge form then in use, which asked for the discriminating entity and not the individual actors, was so misleading that the plaintiff in that case was not required to have exhausted against the previously unnamed individual defendants.

Retaliation for complaining

Section 28-1-7(I)(2) makes it unlawful for any person or employer to "engage in any form of threats, reprisal or discrimination against any person who has opposed any unlawful discriminatory practice or has filed a complaint, testified or participated in any proceeding under the Human Rights Act." Firings after a complaint, and how they fit with New Mexico's default employment rule, are covered on the New Mexico at-will employment and New Mexico wrongful termination pages.

Deadlines and where to file

The Human Rights Bureau of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions handles complaints under the Act.

• Complaint deadline: "All complaints shall be filed with the division within three hundred days after the alleged act was committed" (§ 28-1-10(A)). The same deadline applies to harassment and other discrimination.
• Order of nondetermination: a complainant "may request and shall receive an order of nondetermination from the director without delay after the division's receipt of the complaint and in jointly filed cases, after the federal complaint has been closed" (§ 28-1-10(D)). That order may be appealed under § 28-1-13.
• Court: a person aggrieved by an order of the commission may obtain a trial de novo in district court, and "The notice of appeal must be filed within ninety days from the date of service of the commission's order" (§ 28-1-13(A)). Either party may request a jury (§ 28-1-13(C)).
• Federal charge: the Bureau states that "Under a work-sharing agreement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Bureau also enforces provisions of federal workplace discrimination laws." The EEOC states that its "180 calendar day filing deadline is extended to 300 calendar days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis." The EEOC's Phoenix District Office, which lists the New Mexico Human Rights Division as a fair employment practices agency, states that an individual usually has 300 days from the date of alleged harm to file an EEOC charge against an employer with 15 or more employees in New Mexico.

New Mexico's path to court runs through the Bureau's process and an appeal for a trial de novo, including the hearing-waiver option in § 28-1-10; those steps, and the remedies available under § 28-1-13(D), are on the New Mexico wrongful termination page. The New Mexico employment discrimination settlement calculator is an estimating tool, not a prediction of any outcome.

Training, policies and posters

The Human Rights Act imposes a posting requirement. Section 28-1-14 provides that "Every person who is subject to the Human Rights Act, except an individual selling houses, shall keep posted in a conspicuous place on his premises notices prepared by the division which shall set forth excerpts of the Human Rights Act and other relevant information as determined by the secretary."

Neither the Human Rights Act (NMSA Chapter 28, Article 1) nor the employment statutes in NMSA Chapter 50 require private employers to provide harassment training or to adopt a written harassment policy.

NDAs and settlement confidentiality

New Mexico limits confidentiality terms on harassment claims through NMSA § 50-4-36, enacted by Laws 2020, chapter 16. Subsection (A) provides:

"A private employer shall not, as a term of employment, require an employee to sign a nondisclosure provision of a settlement agreement relating to a claim of sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation in the workplace brought by the employee or prevent the employee from disclosing a claim of sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation occurring in the workplace or at a work-related event coordinated by or through the employer." (NMSA § 50-4-36(A))

Subsections (B) and (C) allow two kinds of confidentiality in a covered settlement: confidentiality of the monetary amount, and, at the employee's sole request, confidentiality of the employee's identity or of the facts. Subsection (D) then states that "Except as provided in Subsections B and C of this section, a confidentiality provision in a settlement agreement subject to this section is void and unenforceable as a matter of law."

Three limits matter when reading the section: it applies to private employers; it concerns claims of sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation in the workplace or at a work-related event coordinated by or through the employer; and it took effect May 20, 2020, applying to agreements entered into on or after that date.

Federal law adds limits for sexual harassment disputes: the Speak Out Act makes nondisclosure and nondisparagement clauses agreed to before a sexual harassment dispute arises judicially unenforceable where the conduct is alleged to violate federal, tribal or state law, and the Ending Forced Arbitration Act lets the person alleging sexual harassment elect court over a predispute arbitration agreement, both explained on the workplace harassment laws hub.

Is workplace bullying illegal in New Mexico?

The Human Rights Act reaches harassment because of the traits it lists. Its employment provisions contain no rule on general workplace bullying that is not tied to one of those traits.

Documenting harassment and workplace monitoring

The rules on recording a conversation at work, including a conversation with a harasser, are on the New Mexico workplace recording laws page. Employer monitoring of email, devices and workspaces is covered on the New Mexico employee monitoring laws page.

Changes to New Mexico harassment law

• 2004: the New Mexico Supreme Court decided Ocana v. American Furniture Co., holding that the Act prohibits quid pro quo and hostile work environment sexual harassment and adopting the federal employer-liability framework.
• 2005: Laws 2005, chapter 311 lengthened the complaint deadline in § 28-1-10(A) from 180 to 300 days, effective June 17, 2005.
• 2020: Laws 2020, chapter 16 enacted § 50-4-36 on settlement nondisclosure provisions, effective May 20, 2020.
• 2021: amendments (Laws 2021, chapters 19 and 37) brought the race definition's language on hair texture, length of hair, protective hairstyles and cultural or religious headdresses.
• 2024: Laws 2024, chapter 21 added military status to § 28-1-7(A), effective May 15, 2024.

Related pages

• Workplace harassment laws by state
• New Mexico wrongful termination
• New Mexico at-will employment laws
• New Mexico employee monitoring laws
• New Mexico workplace recording laws

This article provides general legal information about New Mexico workplace harassment law under the New Mexico Human Rights Act and NMSA § 50-4-36 as of 2026-10-20. It is not legal advice. For advice about a specific situation, contact a lawyer licensed in New Mexico or the New Mexico Human Rights Bureau.

Last updated: 2026-10-20.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is workplace harassment illegal in New Mexico?

The New Mexico Human Rights Act bars discrimination in the terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of a protected trait (NMSA § 28-1-7(A)). The New Mexico Supreme Court held in Ocana v. American Furniture Co., 2004-NMSC-018, that the Act prohibits quid pro quo and hostile work environment sexual harassment.

How many employees does an employer need for New Mexico harassment law to apply?

Four. Section 28-1-2(B) defines an employer as any person employing four or more persons and any person acting for an employer. The same threshold applies to harassment and other discrimination; spousal affiliation is covered only at employers with 50 or more employees.

How long do you have to file a harassment complaint in New Mexico?

A complaint must be filed with the Human Rights Bureau within 300 days after the alleged act was committed (§ 28-1-10(A)). An appeal to district court for a trial de novo must be filed within 90 days from service of the commission's order (§ 28-1-13(A)).

Does New Mexico protect sexual orientation and gender identity at work?

Yes. Section 28-1-7(A) lists sexual orientation, gender and gender identity among the traits on which employers with four or more employees may not discriminate.

Can a New Mexico employer make me sign an NDA about sexual harassment?

NMSA § 50-4-36 bars a private employer from requiring, as a term of employment, that an employee sign a nondisclosure provision of a settlement agreement on a workplace sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation claim. In covered settlements entered on or after May 20, 2020, confidentiality is allowed only for the monetary amount or, at the employee's sole request, the employee's identity or the facts.

Is my employer responsible for harassment by a supervisor in New Mexico?

In Ocana, the New Mexico Supreme Court held that employer liability is presumed where there is actionable sexual harassment by an employee with supervisory authority over the victim; where no tangible employment action was taken, the employer may rebut the presumption by proving both elements of an affirmative defense.

Does New Mexico require sexual harassment training?

Neither the Human Rights Act nor the employment statutes in NMSA Chapter 50 require private employers to provide harassment training or adopt a written policy. Section 28-1-14 does require employers to post the division's Human Rights Act notices.

Is workplace bullying illegal in New Mexico?

The Human Rights Act reaches harassment tied to the traits it lists, such as sex, race, religion and disability. Its employment provisions contain no rule on general workplace bullying unconnected to those traits.