Student Rights
We believe schools are not constitutional dead zones. How can we expect today’s students to grow up to be tomorrow’s civic leaders if we do not respect these fundamental national values in our schools?
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire believes that schools are not constitutional dead zones. How can we expect today’s students to grow up to be tomorrow’s civic leaders if we do not respect these fundamental national values in our schools? Education is the foundation for civic participation and schools are formative in shaping how children and young people view themselves and others. Accordingly, it is essential that school environments foster safe spaces in which ALL students can learn.
ACLU-NH is committed to advocating for and protecting students’ rights in a variety of areas, as well as empowering students to be their own advocates.
Free Speech and Privacy
Today, the growing concern about drugs and violence in schools often trumps students’ privacy rights. Federal courts have found that students’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures do not always apply in a public school setting. ACLU-NH fights for students' privacy, challenging unreasonable strip-searches, electronic monitoring, and searches and seizures of property such as cell phones.
Other policies and practices we fight against that infringe on students’ privacy and free speech rights, include:
- Disciplining students for speech critical of teachers and administrators.
- Requiring students to surrender their social media passwords.
- Excessive filtering of online content viewable at schools. For example, our “Don’t Filter Me!” project to remove school Internet filters that block hundreds of LGBT websites.
Schools collect a wealth of information on students. Some of this—such as grades, discipline problems, and household income—makes sense for educators to collect and can be vital to the protection of civil rights. Conversely, other information—such as pregnancy, mental health, victimization, and criminal histories—is excessive.
LGBT+ Students
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth shouldn’t have to fear going to school. We fight to protect the right of trans and gender nonconforming students to be treated with respect. Young people should have the freedom to be open (or not) about their identity and beliefs in schools, at college, in government facilities, and in public. The ACLU LGBT Project helps protect young people's right to express themselves, start gay-straight alliance clubs, have their gender identity respected, and be taught in a safe environment.
Part of our Know Your Rights campaign is designed specifically to equip LGBT+ students with the knowledge necessary to advocate for their rights in school.
Women
Since the enactment of Title IX in 1972, federal law has guaranteed the right to education free from sex discrimination. While there have been great strides toward achieving equality, serious obstacles remain which disproportionately impact women and young girls in schools. These include: sex-segregated education programs; lack of supportive services for and discrimination against pregnant and parenting students; and the trivialization of gender-based violence and harassment. For further reading, click here.
Voting
Since 2008, states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for students, among other Americans, to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls.
The Latest
ACLU-NH Statement on Demonstrations at UNH and Dartmouth College Campuses
While the situation is still developing, we are highly concerned that police, many in riot gear, appear to have moved quickly and forcefully into protests at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College campuses. Use of police force against protestors should never be a first resort.
Cases, Campaigns & Legislation
Aug 07, 2025
NEA-NH v. New Hampshire Department of Justice
On August 7, 2025, a diverse group of educators and advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new anti-equity, anti-inclusion, and anti-diversity law in New Hampshire, which became effective on July 1, 2025, after being signed into law by Governor Ayotte in late June. The law, contained within House Bill 2’s budget provisions, seeks to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs pertaining to race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability in New Hampshire schools (including both K-12 public schools as well as both public and private colleges and universities) and public entities like police departments and libraries.
This law radically contradicts federal civil rights laws that protect the rights of students with disabilities, violates the First Amendment rights of educators and students, and is vague and ambiguous under the United States and New Hampshire Constitutions.
The lawsuit was brought by the state’s largest educator union, National Education Association – New Hampshire (NEA-NH), four school districts (Oyster River Cooperative School District, the Dover School District, the Somersworth School District, and the Grantham School District), trainer and consultant for diversity, equity, and inclusion James M. McKim, Jr., diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator and psychology professor Dottie Morris, and New Hampshire Outright, a nonprofit that provides training in public schools and entities on creating environments of inclusion and belonging for LGBTQ+ students.
They are represented by lawyers from a broad coalition of organizations and law firms, including the ACLU of New Hampshire, the national ACLU’s Disability Rights Program and Racial Justice Program, National Education Association-New Hampshire (NEA-NH), GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), and Drummond Woodsum & MacMahon.
The law does not just seek to prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion in public entities and public schools, but it also seeks to strip away millions of dollars in critical state (and possibly federal) public funding if K-12 public school districts guess wrong as to how the New Hampshire Department of Education interprets the vague law’s provisions. According to one estimate, state aid to school districts could amount to more than $1 billion annually.
The law is already arbitrarily and selectively being enforced by the state Department of Education, which is aggressively applying it to private (including religious) colleges and universities that receive student scholarship funds through state grant aid programs (like UNIQUE Program state grants and the Governor’s Scholarship), but apparently not private K-12 schools (including religious schools) that receive public funds through Education Freedom Accounts.
The law also applies to private colleges and universities (for example, Dartmouth College, Southern New Hampshire University, and Saint Anselm College) that receive any form of state funding, including those that receive state scholarship grants that help New Hampshire residents attend these colleges.
The lawsuit also raises concerns about how this law could impact school districts’ federally-mandated collection of demographic data, including racial and ethnic groups, in New Hampshire.
As the law was still making its way through the legislative process, disability rights advocates expressed clear concerns that essential services, programs, and trainings aimed at helping the lives of people with disabilities could be dismantled by the law. The legislature failed to address these concerns in the final bill language that was ultimately signed into law.
This lawsuit follows several others filed in New Hampshire challenging anti-equity practices in education, including a 2021 lawsuit against a classroom censorship law that was struck down in federal court in May 2024, and one lawsuit filed on March 5, 2025 in New Hampshire by the ACLU of New Hampshire, national ACLU, NEA, and NEA-NH against the U.S. Department of Education. These practices were halted by the court in April 2024.
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