“Today’s decision is a victory for First Amendment rights,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director for the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief on the case. “The court recognized that government actors cannot sue citizens for alleged torts in an attempt to suppress legal, but unpopular, speech in public places. We must all remember that the First Amendment only means something if it protects popular and unpopular speech alike.”
In a nearly complete victory for Robin Hood of Keene, the NH supreme court has affirmed nearly all of the superior court’s decisions against the people calling themselves the “City of Keene” in the city’s libelous assault on the heroic activists who have rescued thousands of motorists from parking tickets in downtown Keene in the last couple of years.
The victory is nearly complete, with one exception. The supremes ruled that the lower court needed to consider the city’s request for injunction separately from the claims of “tortious interference” and “conspiracy”. Therefore, the supremes remanded only that detail back to the superior court to decide. If you’ve been reading Free Keene for a while, you may recall that the city’s original suit in 2013 asked for a in injunction of a 50ft radius “buffer zone” around each parking enforcer that would preclude the named Robin Hooders from being in that zone. Eventually, they reduced their request to 30ft, then 10-15ft. The buffer zone concept has previously been ruled unconstitutional in other courts and likely will be again when it goes back to Cheshire superior court.
The rest of the court’s twelve-page opinion backs up the lower court’s dismissal of the city’s outrageous case. The claims of “tortious interference” with the city’s “business” of screwing over people shopping downtown and the claim of “conspiracy” were shut down on a free-speech basis:
However, we need not decide whether a viable tortious interference claim can exist under the circumstances present in this case because we agree with the trial court that holding the respondents liable for tortious interference based upon their alleged activities would infringe upon the respondents’ right to free speech under the First Amendment…we also conclude that the First Amendment bars the City from pursuing its claim that the respondents are liable for conspiring to commit the very same tort.
The city’s lies about the behavior of Robin Hooders (they claimed, without evidence, we were “harassing, threatening, and intimidating” the parking enforcers) had no effect on the court’s decision to dismiss. The court’s judges know that telling government bureaucrats how you feel their job is wrong is fully within free speech protections, even if the bureaucrats don’t want to hear it. Further, the court opinion backed up the Robin Hooders’ non-verbal actions as protected free speech: (more…)
Delicious treats will be delivered tomorrow to the folks calling themselves the “City of Keene” as thanks for all the publicity they have given to Robin Hood of Keene with their ridiculous lawsuit against us. Look for the decision to be rendered by the NH supreme court tomorrow. The chocolate-covered strawberries will be delivered regardless of how the supreme robed men and women decide. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest on the case.
A note of gratitude.
Should you like some Sherri’s Berries for yourself or for someone as a gift, please use code FTL by clicking the microphone at the top right of their website.
What happened to the cannabis decriminalization bill that overwhelmingly passed the house with more than 80% of NH state reps voting for it? In an embarrassing display of ignorance, watch as multiple NH senators spout off various prohibitionist lies and nonsense in this hearing that came at the end of a 12-hour day for liberty activists at the state house. Despite initially having enough votes to pass the measure, prohibitionist senator Carson moves to strip some more from the already-crippled bill. This ultimately kills it, for political reasons.(Technically it’s “tabled” until 2016.)
The good news is this is the first time the NH senate has ever had a floor discussion on the issue (the house has passed decrim six times in eight years), as ignorant as much of it was, it’s a step in the right direction. The next step is to target the bad senators for either education or elimination in 2016’s election. More detail on what happened below the video, from someone who was with me witnessing the debacle.
HB618 (Marijuana Decrim) is dead until January, at the earliest. Last night, the Senate voted 15-9 to overturn the committee’s recommendation of ITL (inexpedient to legislate/kill this bill) so that Senator Pierce could introduce a compromise amendment. This was encouraging.
At the point the vote was taken, Senator Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) walked out of the session and began loudly yelling and ranting about how she couldn’t believe this was happening, (more…)
Dave Ridley continues his series of videos from the Keene School Board meeting last month. As usual, his ambush-style interviews capture more ridiculous, unaccountable behavior from the school board members and school staff.
In this video, one school board member refuses to agree to support ANY kind of budget cap. No amount of taxing is too much!
In this video, Ridley confronts school bureaucrats who do not want to answer questions about anything as well as another school board member who refuses to support a budget cap: (more…)
The Shire Society website has gotten a facelift! The site now has a responsive design so it will work on mobile browsers and desktop and still has all the features from before including the Shire Society Declaration that you can sign, the Shire map, immigration information, and useful tools and links. Drop in and declare your independence by signing the Shire Society Declaration today!
Perhaps more important is there is brand new software running the Shire Society Forum now. We’ve switched from SMF to the more-modern Vanilla Forum. That means a few major changes – now messages post instantly to a thread without having to reload the page – using the forum is a lot faster as a result. It’s also easier in general to compose a message, plus, there’s social networking sharing options on every thread.
While it’s true that a lot of activists are on Facebook, the Shire Society Forums have continued on despite the mass-exodus to Facebook. It’s important to keep alternate communications methods alive. The Shire Society Forum does that and has long been a destination for new people who are not on Facebook or don’t know where to find NH activists on Facebook. There are new people signing up every month at the Shire Society Forum, so please drop in and welcome them.
There is a world outside of Facebook and the new Shire Society Forum will help connect you with that world. If you’ve never been, come by and post an introduction to get full forum access.
