The American Civil Liberties Union is suing state Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell, for allegedly barring a man from the legislative committee meeting in violation of his First Amendment rights.
Virgil Beagles, a
“Adair verbally accosted Beagles as he sat in a hallway of the Capitol building, yelling and pointing his finger at Beagles and demanding that Beagles exit the building,” an ACLU news release states. “At Adair’s insistence, Senate security prohibited Beagles from entering the Senate side of the Roundhouse and from attending committee hearings on bills that were of special interest to him.”
Bad blood between the two apparently stems in part from an event that took place last year. At a June 2006 Democratic Party function, according to the ACLU, Beagles told Chavez County Commissioner Alice Eppers that she was not welcome at the table where he was sitting, prompting Eppers to file a report with Roswell police alleging that Beagles threatened her. The ACLU called the allegations false.
The ACLU alleges that Adair called Beagles an “evil person” who had “threatened a county commissioner.”
“Party politics may provide the backdrop to this case, but a bigger principle lies at its heart: the right of every citizen to express themselves without fear of retaliation,” ACLU New Mexico Director Peter Simonson said. “Senator Adair interfered with that guarantee, and we’re going to see that Mr. Beagles’ rights are restored.”
Adair told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the lawsuit is “a badge of honor. Seems almost every time I introduce a piece of legislation, the ACLU is there to testify against it.”
He also told the newspaper he “had no idea Mr. Beagles had been barred from the Senate. I did not even know it was possible to be barred.”