SANTA FE, N.M. – New Mexico outlawed school “lunch shaming” on Thursday.

The Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights Act signed into law by New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez states “regardless of whether or not a student has money to pay for a meal or owes money for earlier meals, a school shall provide a United States department of agriculture reimbursable meal to a student who requests one.”

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The law also states schools “shall not require that a student throw away a meal after it has been served because of the student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for earlier meals.”

The legislation specifically prohibits schools from stamping students’ hands, requiring them to wear a wristband, or singling them out in any way for holding a lunch debt, and bans schools from tasking students with chores to repay overdue balances.

Jennifer Ramo, executive director of New Mexico Appleseed, told The New York Times the anti-poverty group pushed for the law’s passage because some schools have shamed kids who couldn’t afford lunch, by singling them out when their accounts are overdrawn.

Some schools have also thrown students’ lunches in the garbage when they can’t pay, she said.

“People on both sides of the aisle were genuinely horrified that schools were allowed to throw out children’s food or make them work to pay off debt,” she said. “It sounds like some scene from ‘Little Orphan Annie,’ but it happens every day.”

EAGnews has documented numerous incidents across the country in recent years which school officials have stamped students’ arms with degrading reminders for their parents, dumped food, or otherwise embarrassed students whose parents don’t pay up.

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Just this week in Phoenix Desert Cove Elementary School humiliated Tara Chavez’ son with a large stamp on the boy’s arm that read “LUNCH MONEY” even though he had 75 cents remaining in his lunch account, BuzzFeed reports.

“He was screaming and crying the entire time,” Chavez said. “He was humiliated, didn’t even want me to take a picture of it.”

In other instances, school lunch workers have quit or been fired from their jobs for refusing to participate in lunch shaming tactics or buying lunch for needy students.

Democratic state Sen. Michael Padilla said he moved to ban lunch shaming in New Mexico because he experienced the problem first hand growing up as a foster child.

“I made Mrs. Ortiz and Mrs. Jackson, our school lunch ladies, my best friends,” he told the Times. “Thank goodness they took care of me, but I had to do other things like mop the floor in the cafeteria. It was really noticeable that I was one of the poor kids in the school.”

Ramo said she doesn’t believe that most schools intentional aim to embarrass students who can’t afford their lunch, but believes “we have to separate the child from a debt they have no power to pay.”

“I don’t think the main intention of the school meal debt policies is to humiliate,” she said. “Mostly, school nutrition directors are trying to balance their budgets and they see this is a necessary but effective evil.”