Dear Superintendent Cochrane, Dr. Metzler, Principals Collins and DiNola, Headmaster Powers, and Members of the Hampstead School Board: We all want to do what is best for our children. Sometimes during times of “crisis” though, adults rely upon the advice of so-called “experts” who may not have all the facts.
Common sense, independent critical thinking, and logic can fall by the wayside. Conformity, compliance, and liability avoidance are sometimes chosen over ensuring natural rights, such as the right to breathe freely and the right to refuse medical experiments or interventions, as described in the Nuremberg Code of Ethics.
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Constitutional expert KrisAnne Hall says that history always repeats itself. It is up to us to decide if we are going to repeat the mistakes of the past, or if we are going to learn from history and do better the next time around. Nazi soldiers who committed atrocities during World War II tried to use the excuse that they were only doing what they were told to do by their superiors. That defense did not work then, and it will not work now. Allow me to explain.
Related: Does NH State Law Prohibit the Use of Breathing Restraints on Students?
Yesterday, thanks to the efforts of activists affiliated with ReopenNH who scoured through our laws, it came to light that mask mandates for students are apparently in violation of an existing New Hampshire statute. Title X Public Health Code Section 126-U:4 states that:
“No school or facility shall use or threaten to use any of the following restraint and behavior control techniques:
I. Any physical restraint or containment technique that:
(a) Obstructs a child’s respiratory airway or impairs the child’s breathing or respiratory capacity….”It goes on to prohibit anything that “Involves pushing on or into the child’s mouth, nose, eyes, or any part of the face or involves covering the face or body with anything, including soft objects such as pillows, blankets, or washcloths…” [Emphasis mine]
This law was enacted in September of 2010 to ensure the safety of students, some of whom are non-verbal and on the autism spectrum, in the event they have a violent, physical outburst during the school day. Such incidents are obviously disruptive to the rest of a school, but unfortunately, some adult personnel had been using dangerous measures to subdue these children when they became disorderly.
If (and when) charges are filed against school district officials for violating this law, defense counsel will no doubt argue that issuing mask mandates in an attempt to prevent the spread of a virus is a much different situation. However, the fact remains that students’ behavior has been controlled and modified by requiring them to wear a soft covering over their airways, which impaired their breathing and respiratory capacity. Independent experiments with OSHA air quality “sniffer” probes placed between a cloth mask and a person’s mouth have shown that oxygen intake is reduced to legally hazardous levels (hypoxia) and carbon dioxide exhalate is trapped (hypercarbia), which can negatively affect brain development and cognitive abilities.
This RSA was presented to Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut yesterday, who then consulted with the Attorney General’s office. Edelblut stated that he believes enforcement of RSA 126-U:4 will put an end to school mask requirements. We were told that an official notice to cease masking could be forthcoming. I suspect that it might not be issued immediately, though, because officials at the state level are probably trying to find a way to evade liability and avoid admitting that almost everyone in charge of our education system has violated a law that has been on the books for over 10 years.
On November 19, 2020, Governor Christopher Sununu’s Emergency Order # 74 included mask exemptions for “Educators, students, and staff within K-12 schools.” SAU # 55 and many other districts opted to ignore this “get out of jail free” card. Instead, you decided to continue asphyxiating our children, affecting their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Governor Sununu’s Executive and Emergency Orders did not suspend existing laws, nor did they create new ones. For a law to be enacted, it must first be proposed as a bill and assigned to a committee. A hearing must be held allowing for public input & debate. Once it passes committees in both the House and Senate, the bill is brought before the entire Legislature in both chambers for a vote. If all these steps are accomplished and the Governor signs the bill, then and only then is it added to the New Hampshire RSA’s. This entire process was halted by the governor himself, who locked down the State House and suspended its business. Clearly, his EO’s were never actual laws but merely official guidance.
Emergency Orders are meant to be temporary measures, expiring once the immediate crisis has passed. Although federal officials and the news media would seemingly like to keep everyone living in a state of perpetual fear, it has become obvious that children were never as susceptible as their elders, and that the recovery rate among members of the general population (lacking any co-morbidities or iatrogenic errors) is nearly 100%. Yet Sununu kept renewing his EO’s long past the point where this “pandemic” failed to live up to the hype.
I have no way of predicting what will actually happen in the next few weeks and months. I am simply informing you that despite your best intentions, a New Hampshire law has apparently been violated.
Ignorance of the law is not accepted by the court system as a valid defense. With all due respect, I urge you to do what’s right for our children and allow them to breathe freely, sooner rather than later, before you are ordered to do so by state officials and/or before you possibly face prosecution for hundreds, perhaps thousands of counts of failing to comply with the requirements of Title X Section 126-U:4.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
