Today, on the Morning Update, SB464 just became law, and it has quietly amended New Hampshire’s civil rights law to protect Free Speech (IMO) from spurious hate-speech and hate-crime prosecutions by the AG and whoever else might think to leverage imagined victimhood to suppress protected expression.
00:00 Pretending at Hate Speech and Hate Crime
01:15 Civil rights law old and new
04:02 Win for free speech?
Watch on the ‘Grok Rumble Channel if the Embedded Video does not load.
Ep 203 link(s):
- https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXXI/354-B/354-B-mrg.htm
- https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/billinfo.aspx?id=1444
Authors’ and Speakers’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Edited transcript:
Welcome to your June 25th, 2026. Morning update.
There is speech, and there is crime. There is no such thing as hate speech or hate crime. Crime can be motivated by hate. It can be motivated by lots of other things. There are crimes of passion, but nobody calls them passion crimes or lust crimes. Angry crimes.
Anyway, it’s a problem because a lot of states, including my own, which is the live free or die state, have a civil rights law that is just general enough, vague enough, to allow the attorney general to decide that he just wants to prosecute civil rights crimes in an effort to create some sort of precedent for hate speech law.
To suppress speech, to suppress public expression.
I’ve reported on it repeatedly over the last several years. You can go to GranitGrock.com and take a look around and see what you can find. But anyway, a bill just became law. The governor didn’t sign it, she left it on her desk, and it became law all by itself, which is her way of saying, I guess I’ll let it happen, but I’m not gonna put my name on it. And the reason is that she’s a coward.
And why is she a coward?
Existing civil rights law is very general.
All persons have the right to engage in lawful activities and to exercise, enjoy the rights secured by the United States and New Hampshire Constitutions and laws of the United States of 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. I think you can remove all those words. And it’s exactly the same. Because we’re all people, right? 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 the purpose to terrorize or coerce.
There’s a lot of room in there.
Well, the bill that just became law adds this.
Any person who is motivated in whole or in part by hostility, including but not limited to animus bias or prejudice toward the race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender, identity, or disability of the person, group, or organization directly or indirectly targeted by the unlawful act, or the affiliation or association of the person, group or organization directly or indirectly targeted by the unlawful act with a person or people of a certain race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, sex, gender, identity, or disability knowingly commits one of the following unlawful acts shall be subject to a civil liability under RSA 354:B-2 and to the remedies provided blah blah blah.
One, using unprivileged force against another.
Two, committing an act of violence against another.
Three, causing damage to or trespassing on the property of another, or
Four, threatening to commit any of the acts listed above.
In this section, threatening to commit means the communication by physical conduct or by declaration of an intent to inflict harm or damage to a person or property that, taken in the context of surrounding circumstances, would convey to a reasonable person that the actor has the apparent ability to carry out the threat, and the real possibility that such harm or damage may occur.
Two, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prohibit any conduct or speech that is protected under the United States Constitution or the New Hampshire Constitution.
Three, it shall be unlawful for any person to interfere or attempt to interfere with the rights secured by this chapter.
Which includes (affirms, the right to) free speech. This little modification to our civil rights law has just made it a lot more difficult for judges, prosecutors, attorneys general, and so on to imagine hate crimes that never actually happened. In fact
It has to prove that they are not, in fact, a First Amendment expression before they can even begin to be the collective assholes that they’ve shown themselves to be when left unhindered without guardrails to interpret civil rights law however the hell they felt.
That’s it for today. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Get More Morning Update Here! – Or watch it where you hang out on Spotify, TikTok, Rumble, YouTube, Instagram/Reels, and Steve’s Substack.
Follow ‘Grok on X – Rumble – Facebook – YouTube – Signal – Telegram
WE ARE READER-FUNDED – PLEASE DONATE
