Can Government Ignore Binding Contracts and Take Your Property Rights?
After 85 years of conservation and stewardship in New Mexico, a family says if their constitutional rights aren't protected, the same can happen to any property owner.
New Mexico — Every American understands the promise of property ownership: follow the rules, act in good faith, and your land is your own. But what happens when the local government changes the rules after the fact? That question now sits before both a federal and state court, as Campbell Farming—a fourth-generation, family-owned company that has helped build and conserve New Mexico's landscape—challenges a clear case of government overreach and broken promises.
After signing a binding development agreement with the local municipality, transferring thousands of acres, and operating in good faith, Campbell Farms is now being denied the very property rights that same agreement guaranteed—because local officials decided the rules no longer apply.
This week, Campbell Farming Corporation filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico and an action in State Superior Court, alleging that local officials violated fundamental constitutional protections—taking property rights without just compensation, denying a fair and impartial process, and treating Campbell differently from other landowners under the same laws.
Who Is Campbell?
Campbell Farming Corp was founded in 1922 by General Thomas D. Campbell—a pioneer of modern agriculture. The company has spent more than eighty-five years as a trusted steward of New Mexico land. The family's conservation legacy includes donating roughly 250,000 acres to establish the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest protected habitats in the Country.
Closer to home, Campbell's thoughtful long-range planning helped create East Mountain communities, such as San Pedro Creek Estates and San Pedro Overlook, just outside Albuquerque, along the historic Turquoise Trail. Campbell even granted the easement through the East Mountains that made Highway 14—the Turquoise Trail itself—possible, creating the very transportation corridor that allowed this region to develop.
Campbell went far beyond typical land development. They donated land for schools, fire stations and hundreds of acres of conservation areas that knit neighborhoods to the landscape. For more than eight decades, Campbell hasn't just built in New Mexico—the family has helped shape its character and protect its beauty.
The Vision for Campbell Ranch
In the late 1980s, Campbell began developing portions of ranch land into planned residential communities. For Campbell Ranch—8,000 acres in New Mexico's East Mountains between Albuquerque and Santa Fe—Campbell created a comprehensive Master Plan: a detailed framework for sustainable growth organized around preserved open space, protected view corridors, efficient infrastructure, and conservation of natural beauty.
The Campbell Ranch Master Plan represented the same philosophy Campbell had practiced for decades: cluster development to preserve more land, not less. It was foresight and conservation-minded design—not haphazard sprawl—that would allow the land's character to endure for generations.
A Promise Made—and Then Broken
More than two decades ago, Campbell and the Town of Edgewood entered a binding Annexation and Development Agreement specifically to develop Campbell Ranch under this Master Plan. Acting in good faith, Campbell annexed approximately 6,800 acres of the Master Plan area into the town—a decision that cannot simply be undone. The Town benefitted immediately, including the protection of South Mountain, the dramatic ridgeline that forms the town's scenic backdrop—much of it on Campbell land the family committed to preserve.
The agreement's bargain was simple and explicit: development would proceed under the subdivision ordinances in effect at the time of annexation—the very rules on which Campbell relied while investing millions in surveys, hydrology, engineering, and design to advance this conservation-forward master plan.
For years, Campbell kept its commitments. And the Town enjoyed the benefits of the deal it struck.
A Simple Request—Met With Political Interference
In 2024, Campbell submitted a minor subdivision application—a basic two-step administrative process to recognize that a large tract could be legally divided into five parcels. Not a development approval. Not a plat authorizing construction. Not permits to build. Just the legal recognition of five separate parcels under the same subdivision rules the Town had guaranteed in its own signed Development Agreement with Campbell.
Under those rules, the process was straightforward: the Planning and Zoning Commission reviews the application and renders a decision within 45 to 65 days. So, Campbell submitted its application, and the Planning and Zoning Commission carefully reviewed it and approved it.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead, Bernalillo County—a neighboring government with no jurisdiction over the annexed land—appeared before the Town Commission and warned that approval could trigger litigation. The Town Commission overrode Planning and Zoning's approval and sent the application back for another review.
In the second Planning & Zoning hearing, which stretched more than six hours, the P&Z Commission methodically reviewed all 20 findings of fact in the staff report, voting to approve each finding individually before casting a final 5-0 unanimous vote to again approve the application.
Despite this exhaustive second review, Bernalillo County again filed an appeal to the Town Commission.
At the third and final hearing, Campbell's representatives were not allowed to present its case, cross-examine witnesses, or present evidence, while opponents—including the County with no legal authority over the land—testified freely. The Town Commission denied the application, applying rules that directly violated the ordinances the Development Agreement guaranteed would govern Campbell Ranch.
What should have been a 45-day administrative approval became nearly a year-long ordeal involving three separate reviews, interference from a jurisdiction with no authority, violation of due process and ultimately rejection by a town commission that shouldn't have been ruling on minor subdivisions in the first place.
This Was Not the First Time
Bernalillo County's interference in the 2024 subdivision was just the latest chapter in a two-decade pattern of obstruction—despite having no legal jurisdiction over the annexed Campbell Ranch land.
In 2007, when Campbell secured a water service agreement with New Mexico Water Service Company, Bernalillo County intervened in regulatory proceedings where it had no standing. The water company withdrew its commitment.
When Campbell then partnered with another company to develop its own water utility and received approval from the State Engineer, Bernalillo County intervened again—this time through litigation.
For nearly twenty years, every time Campbell has tried to move forward, Bernalillo County has found a way to intervene—in matters outside its jurisdiction, in proceedings where it has no authority, with results that systematically block Campbell's ability to use its own land.
The pattern is unmistakable.
Campbell is seeking a judicial affirmation that the Constitution still limits government power, that agreements are honored, that process is fair, and that property rights do not exist only at the pleasure of politics.
If a family company with eighty-five years of stewardship, a binding contract, millions invested in good-faith compliance, and full approval from planning experts can still be denied basic property rights through coordinated political interference — then no property owner is safe.
Media Contact: Members of the press may request interviews or statements from a Campbell Farming Corporation representative by submitting a message through the contact page on our website at https://www.campbellfarming.com/contact