The Supreme Court of New Hampshire has dismissed a state lawsuit against a right-wing activist group over a banner displayed from an overpass saying “Keep New England White”.
The court last Friday ruled in a 4-0 decision that legal action filed by the Attorney-General’s Office accusing National Socialist Club 131 (NSC 131) leaders of violating the state’s Civil Rights Act went too far and impinged on the activists’ free speech rights.
“The overbreadth of the State’s construction of the Act creates an unacceptable risk of a chill on speech protected by Part I, Article 22 of our State Constitution,” Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald wrote, the New Hampshire Bulletin reported.
Ten members of NSC-131 hung the banner from a highway overpass in Portsmouth in July 2022, but removed it and left after police informed them they needed a permit. The group has carried out a number of similar protests against White replacement and radical gender ideology in the New England region in recent years.
State prosecutors then dragged two of the group’s leaders, founder Christopher R. Hood Jr and Leo Anthony Cullinan, to court, accusing them violating the Civil Rights Act by trespassing on a public roadway to display the banner while being motivated by race.
Rockingham County Superior Court Judge David W. Ruoff dismissed the charges in June 2023, saying the Attorney-General’s Office’s interpretation of the act was unconstitutionally broad, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire provided the group with legal support.
““We hold that, to state a claim for a violation of the Act predicated upon actual trespass on property, the State must establish that the actor, with knowledge that he or she is not licensed or privileged to do so, enters land in the possession of another or causes a thing or a third person to do so … and that the trespass was ‘motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability’,” Justice MacDonald wrote.
Mr Hood told Noticer News he was grateful for the support he had received while the group was dealing with political lawfare, with two other cases still before the courts.
“We are still fighting a Civil Rights case in Massachusetts over our protests outside of migrant hotels, drag queen story hours, and Antifa events, and another in New Hampshire over our drag queen story hour protest in Concord a few summers ago,” he said.
“We are facing fines, discovery, and criminal injunctions. These cases have presented us with unprecedented legal complications, not just for myself but for the organisation and its members as a whole.
“For now, our legal team has advised us to halt public activism operations, but we will continue to resist this lawfare and remain optimistic for the future.”
Mr Hood has set up a GiveSendGo fundraising page to fight the remaining lawsuits, which he called “a frivolous and poorly executed attempt to drag us into litigation and distract us from our purpose as the tip of the spear in the struggle for New Englanders’ sovereignty and security”.
Header image credit: NH Supreme Court
