These don’t exist yet, but they need to. And New Hampshire should lead the way by becoming the first. The idea isn’t new. New Hampshire is one of several ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ states as of June 2022. As of that date, the state is prohibited
from enforcing any federal statute, regulation, or Presidential Executive Order that restricts or regulates the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
If we can do this for the Second Amendment, why not for the Tenth, which is undeniably larger in scope, and therefore arguably greater in importance?
The Tenth Amendment says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Following in the footsteps of HB 1178 (2022), a corresponding bill would prohibit the state
from enforcing any federal statute, regulation, or Presidential Executive Order that exceeds the delegated powers enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution as written.
The phrase as written is included to prevent the federal government from appealing to ‘amendments’ that it has made (via rulings by its judicial branch) to the Constitution.
Note that this would eliminate federal interference in education, medicine, agriculture, food, finance, energy, and dozens of other areas where the federal government now seeks to impose one-size-fits-all solutions on our state.
In 2017, shortly after being elected Governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu wrote a letter to the House Majority Leader, in which he said:
We urge Congress to untie the hands of the states. Let us have the flexibility to design a New Hampshire system for New Hampshire citizens.
If he was serious about that, then he doesn’t have to wait for Congress to act. He can get his own legislature, which is controlled by members of his own party, to act right now.
The precedent is there. The party is in place. All that’s missing is the political will to return New Hampshire to its rightful role as a sovereign partner in a truly federal government, instead of continuing as a de facto colony of a national government.
