Law / United States / 
New Mexico
Genetic Information Privacy Act
NMSA 1978 Secs. 24-21-1 to 24-21-7
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
Commencement not set.
A sensitive categories rule binding private bodies.
As of 2 September 2026.
What it requires
- Obtain a person's informed, written consent before obtaining their genetic information or samples for genetic analysis, or before performing genetic analysis or collecting, retaining, transmitting, or using their genetic information, unless a statutory exception applies.
- Expect an individual whose rights under this Act are violated to be able to sue directly for damages or other relief, in addition to Attorney General or district attorney enforcement.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
Statutory damages
The court may order, in addition to actual damages, damages of up to $5,000 where the violation results from willful or grossly negligent conduct, plus reasonable attorney fees and appropriate court costs. Each instance of wrongful collection, analysis, retention, disclosure, or use of genetic information is a separate, actionable violation. The Act states no separate, regulator-only civil penalty distinct from this court-ordered relief, so no penalty_structure is recorded.
- As of
- 2 September 2026
- Currency
- USD
- Per person reckless
- 5,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
New Mexico Attorney General or a district attorney; also enforceable through a private civil action by an injured individual. No dedicated regulator civil-penalty schedule distinct from the court-ordered relief in Sec. 24-21-6(C).
What it reaches
Obligation class
Consent, Retention, Prohibition
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
No person may obtain genetic information or samples for genetic analysis from an individual, or perform genetic analysis or collect, retain, transmit, or use genetic information, without first obtaining the individual's or their authorized representative's informed, written consent, subject to nine numbered exceptions covering law enforcement, newborn screening, de-identified use, medical repositories, and research.
Person is not limited to government or insurers; a separate section prohibits genetic discrimination specifically by insurers. Enacted in 1998 (House Bill 331) and amended in 2015 (House Bill 369, which replaced person with individual in the penalties subsection); the enrolled bill text for neither version prints an explicit commencement sentence, so no effective date is recorded here.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
official New Mexico enrolled bill text
House Bill 331 of 1998, as amended by House Bill 369 of 2015, New Mexico Legislature. The codified section numbers cannot be verified against this source: New Mexico's codified-statute portal (nmonesource.com) is client-rendered and serves no statute text, and the enrolled bill prints neither its own bill number nor the NMSA numbers its sections became, so the citation anchors appear nowhere in it. The section-by-section correspondence was verified by hand: each "SECTION N" of the bill maps 1:1 onto the codified section of the same ordinal.
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.