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May 05, 2025
It takes courage to stand up to your employer when something is not right. Whistleblower cases often come about when guidelines are ignored, clear violations take place and employee concerns rejected. In the most egregious cases, those alarmed employees even lose their jobs.
Such scenarios are retaliation, which is illegal. Take, for instance, a recent case involving two state of New Mexico workers who complained about how their department oversaw a prominent case involving four vulnerable and abused children.
State took custody, then returned abused children to parents
In October, New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) agreed to a $340,000 settlement in a whistleblower case involving two former employees. The two women – one of whom was a decadelong employee – said retaliation occurred because they disagreed how the department managed the case.
The case came to notice in 2019 when two parents and four children were panhandling outside a retail store in Hobbs, a southeastern city near the Texas border. Authorities soon charged the parents with child abuse, and the CYFD took temporary custody of the children. However, the state later returned the children to their parents.
