#

Marc Jacques, the convicted child porn felon who has been lurking at local girls high school sports events for months, now faces a new round of charges for allegedly possessing child sex abuse images.

According to a statement from the office of U.S. Attorney Jane E. Young, the latest illicit content found in Jacques’ possession includes “several videos and images that appear to depict pubescent, minor females engaged in sexually explicit conduct.”

But perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that his probation officer had evidence of the alleged crimes for months and never bothered to take action, according to the affidavit filed in the United States District Court in New Hampshire.

Jacques, 50, is the father of Kearsarge High School’s Maelle Jacques, a biological male track athlete who won an NHIAA championship last year while competing against girls. Maelle Jacques’ participation on the Kearsarge girls’ soccer team last season caused several teams to forfeit games as the district ignored a state law protecting female athletes from being forced to compete against males.

But Marc Jacques’ unsupervised attendance at the same games inspired outrage when parents found out about his criminal history. Marc Jacques was allowed to be at numerous high school games and extracurricular events this school year, using his transgender child as a shield. 

Marc Jacques was convicted in March in a child sex abuse image case, but remained free on bail pending his sentencing. Though he was sentenced in September to five years in prison, the former Dartmouth College employee was allowed to remain free on bail — and attend school events — until Dec. 2.

On Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced new charges against Marc Jacques, including a new count of possessing child sex abuse images after he was caught downloading videos and photos depicting children being sexually abused while he was on bail. 

According to Homeland Security Investigations Agent Derek Dunn’s affidavit, Marc Jacques accessed and downloaded the child sex abuse images in August and September using devices that his probation officer was supposed to be monitoring. Marc Jacques was allowed to use a laptop, a desktop computer, and a cell phone while on bail after his probation officer installed monitoring software.

In both instances, the monitoring software captured the activity when Marc Jacques allegedly downloaded the child sex abuse material, but his probation officer never checked the software reports until October, Dunn writes. The videos and images reportedly depict young prepubescent girls being abused.

In October, parents in the high school sports community were concerned that Marc Jacques was attending Kearsarge girl’s soccer games despite his sex crimes conviction. Several parents contacted the United States Attorney’s Office in Concord with questions about why Marc Jacques was being allowed free access to the games.

The United States Attorney’s Office contacted Marc Jacques’ probation officer on Oct. 15 to discuss the conditions of release set for the convicted sex offender. This conversation prompted the probation officer to check the monitoring software on Oct. 16, for the first time since at least August, according to Dunn’s report.

Marc Jaques was arrested on Oct. 18 for violating his bail. He’s since started his five-year sentence in the original case. 

It’s not unheard of for people convicted in federal criminal cases to get a few weeks of freedom before starting their sentences, allowing them to get their personal affairs in order. But Marc Jacques received months of extra time after he pleaded to United States District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro that his transitioning son Maelle Jacques needed him at the high school soccer games.

“Maelle is going need me to be present and in attendance to support [Maelle] and protect [Maelle] in the face of the fears [Maelle] will have of what could happen to [Maelle] on the athletic fields,” Marc Jacques wrote in a letter to the court ahead of his September sentencing.

Kearsarge officials knew about the conviction and sentencing, but allowed Marc Jacques to be at the games anyway. They also said nothing to opposing teams when Kearsarge went on the road. Superintendent John Fortney said in a letter to parents after the Oct. 18 arrest that there was no legal way for the district to stop Marc Jacques from attending the games, despite the conviction.

Marc Jacques is due in the federal court in January for an initial appearance. 

The Israeli flag, the white and blue banner with the Star of David, is the official symbol of the state of Israel, one of America’s closest allies. And yet the City of Nashua told a federal judge Israel’s flag is too controversial to fly at City Hall Plaza.

The Pride flag, on the other hand, is more than welcome on Nashua city property, despite being an entirely political symbol of the LGBT movement.

Nashua’s Assistant Corporation Counsel Jonathan Barnes said flying Israel’s flag would spark a flood of angry phone calls and threats, while “reasonable citizens” wouldn’t be bothered by the Pride flag.

Those revelations came last month in federal court as part of the city’s legal defense against a lawsuit filed by resident Beth Scaer. The city rejected her requests to fly the Pine Tree Riot flag and a banner promoting girls-only sports on Nashua’s public flagpole. Scaer claims she’s the victim of viewpoint discrimination by the Democrat-controlled city. She is represented by the Institute for Free Speech and local counsel Roy McCandless.

In the wake of the lawsuit, Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess quietly ended the city’s community flag pole tradition.

During the Nov. 5 hearing before Judge Talesha Saint-Marc, Nashua’s Assistant Corporation Counsel Jonathan Barnes compared the Pine Tree Riot flag to a Nazi flag and a flag for the Soviet Union.

Barnes also brought up the city’s decision to reject a request by Nashua resident Nick Scalera to fly the Palestinian flag on a day set to remember the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. He says that proves the city was not discriminating based on a particular viewpoint.

And, Barnes added, “If someone applied to fly the Israel flag, I would say you would probably reject that, too, because it’s just — you don’t want to wade into those waters. You want to be able to conduct your city business without getting inundated with angry phones, e-mails, and people threatening you on Twitter, or X, whatever it’s called now.”

Saint-Marc noted that “at one point the city accepted the Pride flag. That’s still a controversial position.”

Barnes responded by invoking American Freedom Defense Initiative v. King County (2016) In that case, ads featuring the images of Islamist terrorists were rejected by the transit system, which argued they weren’t suitable. AFDI sued, lost in the lower courts and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case. The district court ruled the space was a “limited public forum” and that the system’s restrictions were “reasonable and viewpoint neutral.” 

“In American Freedom Defense Initiative the ban on less controversial advertising was upheld. It wasn’t all controversial advertising,” Barnes argued.

“So, in the grand scheme of things, you know, there are Pride flags flown all over the country. The White House lights up with the colors in June. There are parades all over the country. There might be some people that are upset by that, but there are some people that are upset by the American flag. They would sooner (fly) the Soviet flag fly. Most reasonable citizens don’t find that subject matter to be controversial,” Barnes said.

“The Pride flag?” the judge asked.

“Correct,” Barnes replied.

“I think some reasonable citizens may disagree,” Saint-Marc said, to which Barnes replied, “Some might, but it’s less controversial than, say, a swastika.”

The city’s argument that the official flag of the nation of Israel is too controversial to fly, and suggesting that “reasonable citizens” would object, raised eyebrows.

“The City of Nashua’s terrifying argument demonstrates why free speech is so important,” said Institute for Free Speech attorney Nathan Ristuccia. “We cannot trust the government to decide whose views are too controversial to be permitted.”

Steve Bolton, Nashua’s long-time lead corporation counsel, tried to clean up the city’s position. He told NHJournal Barnes’ comments about Israel were part of a speculative argument that does not reflect the views of Mayor Jim Donchess or the Board of Aldermen.

“It was hypothetical, but that’s certainly not the position of the City of Nashua,” Bolton said.

Barnes was not in the office Wednesday and did not respond to requests for comment.

Israel is a United States ally and the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s also fighting a war against antisemitic terrorist organizations backed by Iran following the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack in which 1,300 people were murdered. 

For his part, Scalera does not understand how Nashua is deciding which flag to fly. He said he was told the city would not fly the Palestinian flag due to the ongoing war.

“The City of Nashua has not shied away from flying the flags of foreign nations, especially foreign nations involved in active conflict. For example, in the wake of Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine, the City proudly raised the Ukrainian flag in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, as well as the Ukrainian population here in Nashua,” Scalera told NHJournal.

Scalera was also told by members of the Board of Alderman that Nashua would not allow a flag from a territory, like Palestine, that is not officially recognized as a nation.

“However, Nashua has also raised the flag of Kurdistan, which is at this point in time an autonomous region, and hopefully one day a nation-state, but nevertheless was not one at the time of the flag raising,” Scalera said.

Documents filed in the case show the city recently approved a day celebrating the Dominican Republic, which is currently accused of ethnic cleansing for its handling of Haitian refugees. The city also flew a Pride flag last year on orders from Donchess. However, a request for a pro-life flag to celebrate the overturning of the Roe vs. Wade decision was rejected.  

“Censorship,” said state Sen. Kevin Avard (R-Nashua) when asked about the case.

“It all boils down to whom the mayor and alderman of Nashua are comfortable offending and who they would rather not. The Pine Tree ‘Appeal to Heaven’ folks, or the Rainbow Flag-LBTQ community. It doesn’t sound like they want to hear from people of faith.”

And Rep. Judy Aron (R-Acworth), a Jewish member of the New Hampshire House and an outspoken defender of Israel, called the city’s actions “sad.”

“If the leaders of the City of Nashua can’t handle free speech, then perhaps the decision to end the traditional program is sad and disappointing but probably a good decision.”

Aron offered her own solution. “They should just fly a white flag of surrender.”

One of the Bow parents fighting for his right to bear pink, XX wristbands at school athletic events faced a slightly skeptical judge during Thursday’s hearing in the United States District Court in Concord.

When asked by Judge Steven McAuliffe why he wore the wristbands to a Bow girl’s soccer game in September, Anthony “Andy” Foote testified he wanted to support girls in girl’s sports, and not negatively target people in the transgender community with his protest.

“The bottom line is girls are losing what they fought for,” Foote said. 

But McAuliffe wasn’t sold on that explanation, saying it reminds him of the people who protested against the Vietnam War when he was a young man.

“They said, I’m not protesting the war, I’m supporting peace,” McAuliffe said. “I don’t see the difference there.”

Foote, along with fellow soccer dad Kyle Fellers, Foote’s wife Nicole Foote, and Eldon Rash, are suing the Bow School District after they were banned for the offense of wearing pink wristbands marked with XX. Thursday’s evidentiary hearing will allow McAuliffe to decide if the parents can put on the wristbands at games or not. More testimony is anticipated Friday.

After Foote and Fellers were forced to remove the wristbands at the Sept. 17 game, and Fellers was ordered to leave the field, both men were served with no trespassing letters from the Bow School District that banned them from their children’s games and other school events. McAuliffe overturned the ban last month, but he did not block the district’s prohibition against silent forms of protest.

When questioned by the attorneys, both Fellers and Foote maintained on the witness stand they were supporting women’s sports by wearing the wristbands. But McAuliffe wanted to establish Foote and Feller’s need to publicly support for women isn’t occurring in a vacuum. 

“The object of your protest is, ‘I don’t like the fact a trans girl is playing on a girl’s team,’” McAuliffe said. “It’s all about the trans girls playing on girls’ teams.”

McAuliffe previously suggested there is nothing bigoted in believing that transgender girls — aka “biological boys” — should not play full-contact sports with biological girls. He said again Thursday that opinion is not out of bounds.

“You’re entitled to your viewpoint, a lot of people hold it,” McAuliffe said.

Bow’s Sept. 17 game was against the Plymouth High School girl’s team, whose roster includes biological male Parker Tirrell. The week before the Bow game, Tirrell won the right to play on the girl’s team in a lawsuit against New Hampshire’s law banning biological boys from girl’s spots, HB 1205. Tirrell played nearly the whole game against Bow on Sept. 17. 

In the days leading up to the game against Plymouth, and after Tirrell’s legal victory, Foote sent an email to Bow Athletic Director Mike Desilets demanding action to protect the girl’s team.

“Where’s your courage? Where’s your integrity? Stand up for real women or get out of the way,” Foote wrote.

Desilets also received an email from another parent warning about planned disruptive protests at the Plymouth game by angry parents. Foote said that email, warning that soccer dads planned to wear dresses and harass Tirrell, is not based on any facts and the writer had no conversation with him about his protest plans.

And, it was pointed out, none of those events happened.

Instead, the four wore their pink wristbands, there was no comment made toward Tirrell during the game, and no mention of any specific player.

“This was not about heckling Parker Tirrell,” Foote said.

McAuliffe also viewed the police body camera recording of the confrontation between Bow Police Lt. Phil Lamy and Fellers. Fellers had been ordered to leave the field after becoming verbally combative with officials. At his car in the parking lot, Fellers held up a sign with a “Support women in women’s sports” slogan and got into another verbal altercation with Lamy when the game ended.

Fellers was reportedly holding up his sign in the direction of Plymouth’s team bus, but said he did not notice the bus and had no intention of targeting Tirrell.

“I don’t believe anybody should intimidate anybody,” Fellers said.

McAuliffe’s questions about Foote’s intent highlight the nuance in the legal issues at play. While there’s a free speech right to protest, there are also laws against harassment. The school district has maintained it was trying to protect Tirrell from anti-transgender harassment when officials confronted the parents over the wristbands and forced them to remove the items. 

However, that does not explain why the parents were subsequently banned from all after school events. That may be cleared up Friday when Bow Superintendent Marcy Kelly is expected to testify.

The people who allowed a man convicted of distributing child sex abuse images to roam the sidelines at Kearsarge girls’ soccer games are silent now that he’s been arrested yet again, on charges he possessed yet another stash of child pornography.

But one of the parents who blew the whistle on Marc Jacques, Betsy Harrington, is still speaking out. The mother of a Hillsboro-Deering High School student, Harrington, was shocked when she learned about Marc Jasques’ conviction and the fact his status as a felon was being hidden from parents. Harrington first learned about Marc Jacques after she saw him at a girl’s soccer game earlier this month.

“The school never told the girls, never told the parents,” Harrington said.

Many of the Hillsboro-Deering girls boycotted the game with Kearsarge over Maelle Jacques’ participation, a scenario repeating itself all this season. Nearly 6 feet tall, biological male Maelle Jacques is already a champion girls track athlete, easily beating his biologically female competitors during the state championship this year. 

Marc Jacques and Kearsarge have been riding the wave of progressive support for males who identify as female, getting Maelle Jacques nominated for a Biden White House “Girls Leading Change” award. 

A day after the game between the Kearsarge and Hillsboro-Deering girls soccer teams, Harrington was horrified to learn about Marc Jacques’ conviction. Harrington started contacting school officials, police, elected representatives — anyone who might be able to do something about Marc Jaques being at the game.

“Someone has to listen,” Harrington said.

Marc Jaques isn’t going to more games any time soon. He’s locked up as a danger to the community after he was arrested Friday for having a new, secret stash of child sex abuse images, according to court records.

Multiple public officials knew about his conviction for months, and still let him go to games to watch his child compete. In fact, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Jane Young, it took the efforts of many concerned parents like Harrington calling to get the United State Probation Department to take a second look.

“I commend those parents for calling here. I would ask if there is a parent who has a concern that they continue to call,” Young said.

Marc Jaques pleaded guilty in February to sharing dozens of videos and photos depicting child sex abuse images with pedophiles online. Law enforcement found hundreds of abuse videos and photos on Marc Jacques’ digital devices. He claimed in court that he suffers from a sex addiction.

According to court documents. Marc Jaques spent years chatting online with predators, sharing his fantasies about raping children, and even tracking down the identity of at least one of the victims and sharing that identity with other disturbed men online. And yet school officials allowed him to attend Kearsarge girl’s soccer games.

That stands in stark contrast to the treatment of two parents in Bow, N.H., who were slapped with no trespass orders by the Superintendent of Schools for wearing pink wristbands with “XX” written on them to girls soccer game to show their support for girls-only sports.

Kearsarge School District Superintendent John Fortney, Assistant Superintendent Michael Bessette, and School Board Chair Alison Mastin, all failed to respond to requests for comment NHJournal. A review of Kearsarge school board meetings indicates the board held a non-public session in September dealing with the Marc Jacques legal question.

After the guilty plea, Marc Jacques was free on bail pending his sentencing hearing in the United States District Court in Concord. He was sentenced to five years in prison last month, but given until December to report to the Bureau of Prisons to begin his sentence. From his guilty plea through to his arrest last week, Marc Jacques was under no legal restriction to stay away from people under the age of 18. 

However, according to his sentencing form filed in court, once he serves his prison sentence and is released on probation, Marc Jacques will be prohibited from any contact with a child under 18, and he will be prohibited from even going to a park, playground, or sporting event where people under the age of 18 will be present. 

Chief United States Probation Officer Kevin Lavigne declined to speak in detail about Marc Jacques’ release conditions, and he could not answer why a man deemed too dangerous to be around children once he has served his prison sentence was allowed to be around children before he reported to prison.

Harrington, a retired prison counselor who worked with convicted sex offenders, said Marc Jacques’ treatment throughout the case makes no sense. He first popped up on law enforcement radar for child sex abuse image distribution years before he was arrested, she said.

“I don’t think we know the depths of his offending yet. I think the biggest problem was the length of time he had to reoffend,” Harrington said. “There was too much time between the time he was caught, to the time he pled guilty, to the time he was sentenced, to the time he was incarcerated. It all added up to too much time available to reoffend. Plus he was around girls the whole time.”

Harrington thinks Marc Jacques used the debate over his child Maelle Jacques to create sympathy and get a light sentence and easy pre-incarceration conditions. While Young’s office sought 78 months in prison for Marc Jacques, he ended up with a 60-month sentence. Harrington thinks the many school and court officials who should have known better caved to the transgender narrative Marc Jacques pushed.

“That was why he got the weaker pre-incarceration conditions,” Harrington said.

Before his sentencing, Marc Jacques wrote a letter to the court pleading for leniency. His argument was that Maelle Jacques needed him to support the process of gender transition. In the letter, Marc Jacques stated Maelle Jacques’ mother does not think gender transition is the right treatment.

“Transgendered teens have the highest rate of suicide in the United States, and I am afraid for Maelle and her path if she is forced to live with her mother and her stepmother in a home where she is not supported and feels unwelcome,” Marc Jacques wrote.

United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Jane Young

Young said the Probation Department claimed they had Marc Jacques on some of the strictest pre-incarceration conditions available, and that he had been complying with all of those supposedly strict conditions. 

“We considered him somebody who needed to serve a significant period of time in prison, but we also had information about him abiding by those conditions. We are only as good at the information we are given,” Young said.

After a flood of calls from parents like Harrington, the United States Attorney’s Office contacted Probation about concerns that Marc Jacques was a danger. Marc Jacques’ probation officer then checked his monitored internet and found a new, illicit digital storage device was being used. On that device were more images of child sex abuse, according to court records. 

“It’s disturbing and quite frankly unacceptable,” Young said.

Young deferred questions to Lavigne, but said this case highlights the need for greater scrutiny of probationers and their conditions. Without tight conditions and assertive probation officers, prosecutors and judges are left in the dark, Young said.

United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe gave a partial win Tuesday to parents suing the Bow School District after being punished over holding a silent demonstration in support of protecting girl’s sports.

Bow High School parent Kyle Fellers can now go to his daughter’s soccer games, but he can’t wear the pink “XX” wrist band that got him and three other parents in trouble last month. Fellers and Anthony “Andy” Foote were slapped with no trespassing orders by Bow school officials for engaging in a silent protest at the Sept. 17 game.

McAuliffe said while there are complex nuances to the case that need to be sorted out, it’s clear the school was violating the First Amendment rights of the four adults at the game.

“You can’t suppress free speech based on whether you think it’s appropriate,” McAuliffe said.

Fellers, Andy Foote, Nicole Foote, and Eldon Rush are seeking the right to keep wearing pink “XX” armbands to games, but McAuliffe said both Bow’s attorney, Brian Cullen, and attorneys for the parents need to show more evidence and legal arguments to make the case. An evidentiary hearing will be set for November.

Cullen and the district argue the school can set limits on free speech in order to protect students from harassment and other harms. But given the facts before him, McAuliffe wasn’t sold that the school showed it was protecting anyone from any real harassment.

“How is wearing a pink wristband harassment?” McAuliffe asked.

Attorney for the parents Endel Kolde, with the nonprofit Institute for Free Speech, said school officials are punishing people who hold unpopular views.

“Everyone knows if they wore rainbow wristbands in support of trans students, or if they wore blue and gold wristbands in support of the war in Ukraine, nothing would have happened,” Kolde said.

The district was on high alert heading into the Sept. 17 game as Bow was set to host Plymouth High School where transgender student Parker Tirrell plays on the girl’s soccer team. Tirrell won an injunction on Sept. 10 against the state law that bans biological males from playing on girl’s teams.

Cullen said Bow had an obligation to keep Tirrell from being harassed by rowdy, crude protests or heckling. But according to Kodel, few people, including Tirrell, knew about the wristbands until school officials confronted the parents and ordered them to remove the offending accessories. The protest coincided with the Plymouth game, but it was in no way directed at Tirrell, Kodel said.

McAuliffe said while there is not enough evidence on the record to determine what, if any, harm was done by the protests, the pink wristbands on their own symbolize a non-bigoted viewpoint that is still open for debate, that girl’s sports is a space for biological girls. 

Even if Tirrell was aware of the wristbands during the Sept. 17 game, it does not automatically rise to the level of an offense that requires the school to step in and curb the constitutional rights of adults.

“Surely, it’s not harmful for a trans student playing on a girl’s team to know there are people who don’t think they should be playing on the girl’s team,” McAuliffe said

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that New Hampshire’s law barring the teaching of discriminatory content in schools is too vague and, therefore, violates the constitutional rights of educators. 

“The Amendments are viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” wrote United States District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro. The judge based his ruling on the 14th Amendment protection against vague laws, and declared New Hampshire’s legislature passed a law that was nearly “unintelligible.”

The law’s supporters disagree.

Under the law tossed out by Judge Barbadoro:

• You can’t “teach, advocate, instruct, or train” people that one group is inherently superior or inferior to another.
• You can’t teach that people are inherently racist, sexist, etc., based on the group they’re in.
• You can’t teach that people should be discriminated against based on their group.
• You can’t teach people not to even try to treat people in other groups equally (the “race shouldn’t matter/colorblind” approach)

As a result, school districts like Manchester, Litchfield and Laconia could no longer use Critical Race Theory-based curriculum in their classrooms. Striking down the law will allow that content to return.

Barbadoro said the attempt to prevent teachers from telling students they are racist, sexist, etc. crossed the line into viewpoint discrimination.

“The most obvious vagueness problem is presented by the fourth concept, which prohibits teaching that individuals of one group ‘cannot and should not attempt to treat others without regard to’ their membership in another group. As other courts have observed, this language is ‘bordering on unintelligible’ because it employs the dreaded triple negative form,” Barbadoro wrote.

The judge argued the law created an untenable mix of subjective instructions and severe punishment under the law.

“Potential disciplinary sanctions include reprimand, suspension, and revocation of the educator’s certification,” Barbadoro wrote. “In other words, an educator who is found to have taught or advocated a banned concept may lose not only his or her job, but also the ability to teach anywhere in the state.”

New Hampshire Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut’s office declined to comment.

Nixon Peabody attorney Morgan Nighan, who represented the plaintiffs, said a law so unclear that it cannot be followed is a clear violation of the 14th Amendment.

“No ordinary person can understand what is banned,” Nighan said. “Laws like this have been routinely struck down across the country.”

Teachers could not speak about affirmative action legal cases, Israel’s war against Hamas, or any potentially hot button current events issue for fear of breaking the law, Nighan claimed. That meant teachers avoided large sections of history or current events out of fear that could lose their licenses without knowing why.

“For example, teachers may attempt to stimulate discussion by asking students pointed questions or encourage debate by presenting students with ideas contrary to their own. When such techniques are used to explore a banned concept, it is impossible to know whether a banned concept has been impermissibly taught,” Barbadoro wrote.

Supporters of the law dismiss that claim, saying the line between teaching that racism exists and actually advocating racism is easy to see.

Attempts by Edeblut to clarify the law backfired, according to Barbadoro’s ruling. Edelblut tried to explain his views in a June 2021 newspaper oped, but that only added to the confusion and fear, Barbadoro said.

“The threat of arbitrary enforcement based on Edelblut’s personal views has impacted teachers even in the absence of a formal complaint,” Barbadoro wrote.

One incident noted in Barbadoro’s ruling involved Keene Middle School scrapping a plan to teach Ibrahim X. Kendi’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and  You” after the district bought 250 copies of the books. According to the ruling, Edelblut’s column was why Keene abandoned Kendi’s book.

According to Kendi, “There’s no such thing as a ‘not racist’ or ‘race neutral’ policy,” and any person who doesn’t embrace what he calls “antiracism” — overtly treating white people differently from people of color — is engaged in racism. Some parents objected to the notion that their children would be taught that their skin color makes them inherently privileged and racist.

New Hampshire passed the anti-discrimination law as a set of amendments to the biennial budget in 2021. Rather than banning specific “divisive concepts,” the amendments sought to bar teachers from “teaching, advocating, instructing, or training” students that one group is inherently superior or inferior to another; that people are inherently racist, sexist, etc., based on the group they’re in; that people should be discriminated against based on their group; to stop people from treating other equally.

While the law allowed for teachers to discuss issues like racism and sexism in class, there was no clear legal line that distinguished such discussions from actual teaching, opponents complained.

Megan Tuttle, president of the New Hampshire NEA teachers union, said the law “stifled New Hampshire teachers’ efforts to provide a true and honest education. Students, families, and educators should rejoice over this court ruling which restores the teaching of truth and the right to learn for all Granite State students.”

Michael Garrity, spokesman for New Hampshire’s Department of Justice, said the state is reviewing Barbadoro’s ruling.

“The state is currently reviewing the court’s order and will consider next steps, including whether to appeal.”