Staff Reports
Gallup-McKinley County Schools has released a fact sheet detailing their ongoing legal battle with the federal agency monitoring workplace discrimination.
U.S. Equal Employees Opportunity Commission filed a second action against GMCS in federal court April 30 to enforce a third subpoena.
The agency seeks to review a large swath of the district’s personnel documents to investigate alleged discriminatory practices against Native American employees and applicants.
But the district refused to abide by the EEOC’s subpoena, and filed a counter-lawsuit.
In retrospect, the EEOC first filed charges against GMCS in August 2024, alleging the district had discriminated against Native American job applicants and employees by neglecting to interview, hire, or promote them to teaching, administrative, and other leadership roles.
In July, the EEOC requested GMCS turn over five years of employee records for its investigation. The information requested includes employee names, ethnicities, position titles, hiring and application dates, and other sensitive information, according to court documents.
On July 29—two days before the documents were due—Andrew M. Sanchez, an attorney for GMCS, sent an email to EEOC officials notifying them that the district would no longer cooperate with the investigation.
“The EEOC’s current investigation is simply a fishing expedition in which no adverse action to an applicant or employee as to trigger it, and it illegally [en]croaches upon the privacy of rights of the school district’s employees and applicants,” Sanchez said.
The school district filed the counter lawsuit against EEOC Aug. 8. In the lawsuit they call EEOC’s investigation “unlawful, constitutionally deficient, and far outside the agency’s statutory authority.”
A month later, in September, the EEOC issued an administration subpoena. GMCS has not complied with the agency’s order, according to documents filed in federal court April 27.
GMCS released an informational fact sheet May 4, addressing the ongoing lawsuit they filed against EEOC.
In the fact sheet, the school district states that under EEOC’s own regulations, a charge must contain “a clear and concise statement of the facts, including pertinent dates, constituting the alleged unlawful employment practices.”
In essence, the school district claims the EEOC failed to narrow the scope of their investigation.
In a 2025 interview with the Sun, then-GMCS Superintendent Mike Hyatt said the EEOC’s investigation “came out of nowhere.”
“No one filed a complaint, no incident occurred, and the federal government provided no information as a prerequisite for launching [the investigation],” he said. “Despite our repeated requests, they have refused to give us anything at all, yet the EOCC began randomly seeking personal information from our staff.”
The GMCS’ fact sheet lists the five causes of action: a claim for Declaratory Judgment; a Fifth Amendment Due Process/Void for Vagueness violation; Ultra Vires conduct exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority; and two counts under the Administrative Procedure Act alleging arbitrary and capricious agency action and agency action not in accordance with law.
“The school district is seeking a court order declaring the Charge of Discrimination unlawful, a finding that the Charge violates the Fifth Amendment, an order quashing all subpoenas issued to District officials, a halt to all investigative activity, and a permanent injunction barring the EEOC from pursuing this investigation,” the fact sheet states.
The case is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico.
Although retired, the fact sheet featured some statements from Hyatt, in which he says GMCS is “not in the business of discriminating against the very community we exist to serve.”
He also said the district “serves a community that is overwhelmingly Native American—our students, our staff, and our families.”
