News & Commentary

A man was cited for harassment and disorderly conduct by a Littleton police officer after allegedly calling a parking enforcement officer an expletive while he was in a public space; this kind of speech has been held by the U.S. Supreme Court as protected under the First Amendment.

VICT

“[T]his Court should … conclude that … [a] trial court cannot issue a sentence of life without parole under Article 33 of the New Hampshire Constitution. The world has recognized the cruelty of juvenile life-without-parole sentences, which is precisely the reason the sentence has been extinguished worldwide. By any measure, the challenged punishment does not comport with human dignity. It is degrading, unacceptable in contemporary society, and excessive. There are reasons why, as a community, we hurt deeper and mourn harder for the death of a child. Life-without-parole sentences functionally take the lives of children before they have had a chance to change and grow into responsible adults. This is why Article 33 mandates the abolition of such sentences in New Hampshire.”
The case will be argued by the parties before the N.H. Supreme Court this summer.

This case challenges the registration requirement for those sex offenders who completed their sentence before the registry went into effect; the NH Supreme Court held that the law's retroactive, lifetime registration requirements were “punitive in effect” and therefore unconstitutional.

In a victory for free speech rights in New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held today (May 7, 2014) that a DMV regulation prohibiting vanity car license plates “which a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste” violated Part I, Article 22 of the New Hampshire Constitution.  The Court concluded that the regulation was unconstitutionally vague because it is “so loosely constrained” that it “authorizes or even encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”  The NHCLU, with the assistance of the law firm Nixon Peabody, submitted a “friend-of-the-court” brief to the New Hampshire Supreme Court arguing that the regulation was unconstitutional on these very grounds.  The NHCLU also participated in oral argument before the Supreme Court.  The Court’s decision can be found here.

In a victory for free speech rights in NH, the NH Supreme Court held that a DMV regulation prohibiting vanity car license plates “which a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste” was unconstitutionally vague.

We p

On April 3, 2014, the Timberlane Regional School Board (which addresses education in Atkinson, Danville, Plaistow, and Sandown) repealed and replaced unconstitutional internal rules stating that Board members (i) cannot comment to the press and instead must direct press inquiries to the Board Chair, and (ii) must “support” all decisions made by the Board and, thus, are prohibited from engaging in “[e]fforts to undermine a decision” by the Board.  The School Board repealed and replaced these rules in response to a March 28, 2014 letter from the NHCLU stating that these rules infringed upon the First Amendment rights of the Board’s members, particularly those who have minority perspectives.  You can read about these rules and our response here.The replacement rules passed by the School Board on April 3, 2014 provide full protection for Board members who wish to publicly speak about Board policy.   For example, they make clear that “a Board member is under no obligation to publicly support a Board decision and is not restricted from publicly criticizing or expressing opposition to a Board decision” and that a Board member is not prohibited “from expressing his or her opinion [to the press] concerning School Board policies and decisions as an individual member of the Board.”  An article on these new rules can be found here.We commend the Board for making the right decision and not only repealing the old version of these rules, but replacing them with language that protects Board members' First Amendment rights.  We are thankful for Board leadership’s willingness to immediately revisit these rules when our constitutional concerns were raised.  Our hope is that, in the future, other school boards, as well as the NH School Boards Association, carefully consider language that confirms the right of individual Board members to freely speak out on important matters of public concern. 

In t