To be fair, this isn’t the first example in which AG John Formella got the Judicial system to agree with his disastrous interpretation of New Hampshire’s Civil Rights Act. Frank Hobbs took his “feelings” out on someone’s pride sign, and the State decided it was a hate crime. There’s no such thing, but if Judges and juries keep pretending there is, it gets harder to end the BS. They found Hobbs guilty of a civil rights violation and destruction of property because they just knew what he was thinking, as if that even matters.
Formella keeps dipping his tyrannical toe into that brackish pond, and he came up with another court win.
Attorney General John M. Formella announces that the Merrimack County Superior Court has found that Travis Lufkin, age 25, of Concord, New Hampshire, violated the New Hampshire Civil Rights Act, RSA chapter 354-B. The case arose on May 19, 2024, when Mr. Lufkin struck the victim, a transgender woman, in the face at her place of work after he was asked to leave the property. Mr. Lufkin called the victim a homophobic slur when he struck the victim.
The Court found that the assault was motivated by Mr. Lufkin’s animus towards the victim’s gender identity.
“The New Hampshire Civil Rights Act protects every person from violence and intimidation motivated by bias,” said Attorney General Formella. “The New Hampshire Department of Justice will continue to enforce the laws of this state fairly and consistently, hold offenders accountable, and protect the rights and safety of all Granite Staters.”
A homeless guy on a bicycle lost his shit, and because the person happened to be transgender, the AG piled charges on top of what was a simple assault/harassment case by someone who probably wasn’t all there mentally to begin with. [Related: Supreme Court unanimous: There is no ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment]
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. …
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.
I’m not arguing against having an official chat with people for threatening behavior; it’s the presumption that you should invent additional crimes under the dangerous precedent of hate speech. It becomes a tool for suppressing protected expression.
And it’s not just Formella. Trump’s DOJ evoked the notion of hate speech crimes early in the Bondi era. She said, ““There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” she said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The new media right was appropriately outraged at both the reference and the notion that the DOJ has the authority to police any speech that isn’t defamatory or incites violence, two very narrow exceptions. [Related: MACDONALD: Does Trump’s FCC Need to Back “The F” Off?]
If you think it’s a good idea to carry progressive water because you can use it to get back at them, it’s not. No one has a civil right to presume what you’re thinking or imagine they can prosecute you for it in addition to the actual crime. That’s almost religious in its conception and application. As the Secular representative of god, we have looked into your civil soul and find it lacking.
Stop doing the Left’s work for them and then patting yourself on the back for it unless that’s your goal, in which case, I reassert my previous objections to Formella’s appointment and retention in the post.
Fake hate crimes laws and jurisprudence don’t exist to dissuade or prevent people from engaging in criminal behavior; they exist to suppress thought and speech managed by the policing power of the state. Not to create a more civil society, but to control it.
Every time the NH DOJ crows about how it has successfully applied civil rights statute care of hate speech presumptions, we’ve failed as a society and a culture, and most definitely as a Constitutional Republic.
