The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office has been desperately trying to scratch an itch it can’t quite seem to reach—a high-profile case it could use, at least in my estimation, to leverage civil rights law to suppress protected speech.
Create a hate speech exception, tied to state civil rights law, and let the Orwellian pall of silence pervade across the land.
It hasn’t gone well.
A 2023 case against White Supremacists that was clearly a massive overstep and unconstitutional actually got slapped down by a New Hampshire judge.
Earlier this year, the AG’s office attempted to apply RSA 354-B:1 Civil Rights Enforcement after someone removed and allegedly destroyed a Pride sign in Goffestown. Last week, an NH Court agreed, and while I disagree with the civil rights finding, the accused was not exercising speech; he was engaged in vandalism, which, at the time, I suggested would set a precedent they might not want.
I think you could charge 56-year-old Frank Hobbs Jr. with theft or destruction of private property, but then you might have to do that for everyone, and there are many “sign thieves” in New Hampshire. Is that why the AG has gone with the civil rights offense? We wouldn’t want the state to set any prosecutorial precedent concerning sign vandals who do their best work around election time.
According to a news release, Lufkin allegedly entered the victim’s workplace, which she had asked Lufkin to leave on a previous occasion.
Lufkin allegedly “struck the victim in the face, used an anti-gay slur, and engaged in a physical struggle before fleeing the scene on a bicycle,” according to the AG’s news release.
There is reportedly a video of the apparent assault and evidence that Lufkin also called the victim a faggot (the gay slur, not the bundle of sticks).
According to the complaint, the victim, S.K., a transgender woman, was at her workplace in Concord when Mr. Lufkin entered the property. The complaint alleges that the victim had previously asked Mr. Lufkin to leave the store. On May 19, the complaint alleges, Mr. Lufkin struck the victim in the face, used an anti-gay slur, and engaged in a physical struggle before fleeing the scene on a bicycle. Additionally, the complaint alleges that Concord Police later located Mr. Lufkin, and that he allegedly admitted to assaulting the victim and insisted that the victim be referred to as a male despite police reminders. The complaint further alleges that his conduct was motivated by the victim’s actual or perceived gender identity and/or sexual orientation and interfered with her lawful activities.
Lufkin sounds like a douchebag, and if the evidence supports it, then he should be charged with assault and (maybe) trespassing. Perhaps even harassment. But it makes no difference if he has an altar in his basement on which he slaps transgender dolls, and not because he is homeless and has no basement. The State’s Civil Rights Act, which, as I’ve repeatedly argued, as written is itself a racist, bigoted statute, cannot supersede the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
354-B:1 Civil Rights Enforcement. –
I. All persons have the right to engage in lawful activities and to exercise and enjoy the rights secured by the United States and New Hampshire Constitutions and the laws of the United States and New Hampshire without being subject to actual or threatened physical force or violence against them or any other person or by actual or threatened damage to or trespass on property when such actual or threatened conduct is motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability. “Threatened physical force” and “threatened damage to or trespass on property” is a communication, by physical conduct or by declaration, of an intent to inflict harm on a person or a person’s property by some unlawful act with a purpose to terrorize or coerce.Does anyone aside from me see the problem with this statute? It is the major flaw with the entire hate speech and hate crime agenda, and the AG’s critical concern is proof. Motivation based on “race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability” is irrelevant. This is the justice is blind version:
“All persons have the right to engage in lawful activities and to exercise and enjoy the rights secured by the United States and New Hampshire Constitutions and the laws of the United States and New Hampshire without being subject to actual or threatened physical force or violence against them or by actual or threatened damage to or trespass on their property.“
The word “persons” defines everyone without regard to any other metric. We all have these rights because the Constitution should be blind to every other detail. Anyone who tells you otherwise is injecting demographic division for some political perversion; to create crevices into which government can chip away at fundamental liberties.
By its own definition, the current version of RSA 354-B:1 prohibits the AG’s office from infringing on Lufkin’s First Amendment right, his civil right, to be an asshole up until his speech crosses the very fine line defined as criminal threatening. There’s no evidence he did that.
They can charge him with assault and should if he did. Maybe charge him with using a bicycle in the commission of a crime. This is #woke Concord after all.
“Throughout his interview with the police, Defendant (Lufkin) consistently misgendered S.K., referring to her as ‘he’ and ‘him,’” according to the court documents. “This persisted after the interviewing officer corrected Defendant and informed him of S.K.’s gender identity, as Defendant maintained that she was a man. At one point in the interview, Defendant interrupted the investigating officer and asked that the officer stop referring to S.K. as ‘she.’”
According to the attorney general’s memorandum, the fact that Lufkin “repeatedly referred to S.K. as a man, even after police told Defendant that S.K. was a woman” is part of the evidence against him in the hate-crime charge.
Claiming that the misgendering reinforces the civil rights charge is just moronic. Still, it remains to be seen whether a homeless person can mount a reasonable defense on those grounds in this state’s #woke court system with a public prosecutor.
The Concord Pronoun Department story is going viral, as it should. The world will make fun of them, which is well-deserved, but it is not the threat that requires our attention. We have a Rouge AG looking to build Civil Rights case law victories that will give judges an excuse to violate the Constitutional rights of those who cannot afford the legal counsel needed to run these cases up the judicial chain until they get laughed out of court.
They are not asking if they should charge on these grounds, but if they can win. That is a threat to…what’s the word? Democracy! And the Republic.
Assault is assault. Trespassing is trespassing. It has nothing to do with civil rights in any demographic context, which, as argued, ought not even to apply. Race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or disability do not appear in the Constitution.
And someone needs to grow a set and rewrite RSA 354-B:1 to make it less sexist, racist, ageist, and bigoted so the AG can’t abuse it to invent hate speech violations that violate the right to the First Amendment.
