N.M. Supreme Court orders release of APS Brooks report

The New Mexico Supreme Court has ordered Albuquerque Public Schools to release the long-sealed investigative report tied to former superintendent Winston Brooks’s 2014 resignation, a ruling that could reshape how families, taxpayers and reporters pry open district records in Bernalillo County. The court said APS cannot keep the entire 12-page report hidden just by calling it privileged or opinion-based.

The report, prepared by outside counsel Agnes Fuentevilla Padilla for the APS board, sits at the center of one of the district’s longest public-records fights. Brooks resigned in 2014 and received a $350,000 buyout of his contract with public funds. The Albuquerque Journal first asked for the report on Aug. 7, 2014, and APS denied the request the next day, saying the document was part of a personnel file and protected by attorney-client privilege.

In an opinion filed May 28, 2026, the court reversed the New Mexico Court of Appeals, which had previously upheld APS’s refusal to turn over the report. The high court’s case, Albuquerque Journal and KOB-TV, LLC v. Board of Education of Albuquerque Public Schools and Rigo Chavez, APS’s records custodian, has now been litigated for about 12 years. The justices said the Inspection of Public Records Act does protect some material, but not enough to bury the report in full.

The ruling matters far beyond the old Brooks controversy. It says APS must produce the report, while allowing confidential or opinion-based material to stay redacted after an in-camera review by the district court. In plain terms, the public should be able to see the factual core of an internal investigation, even when a school district tries to shield the broader narrative from view.

That distinction is important for parents in Albuquerque, for taxpayers who helped finance Brooks’s buyout, and for anyone tracking how APS handles sensitive personnel matters. The decision narrows how far the district can stretch the IPRA exceptions for matters of opinion in personnel files and attorney-client privileged information. It also reinforces the state’s presumption in favor of access to public records and informed citizenship.

The case drew support from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, The Santa Fe New Mexican, El Rito Media LLC and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, underscoring how widely the dispute was seen as a test of public accountability. For APS, the ruling means the fight over the Brooks report is not over, but the wall around it has finally cracked.