(ConservativeFreePress.com) – A New Hampshire judge said a state law limiting how public schools could teach race and general topics was unconstitutional.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro ruled to overturn the measure affecting students in Kindergarten through 12th grade in public schools.
The law Barbadoro overturned banned public schools in New Hampshire from discussing “divisive topics” relating to sex or race and banned students from being instructed, taught, or compelled “to express belief in, or support for,” the idea they’re “inherently superior” to others because of their gender identity, religion, race, or any other characteristics.
Two lawsuits were filed objecting to the ban. One lawsuit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers and the other by two educators alongside the New Hampshire branch of the National Education Association.
In his ruling, Barbadoro claimed the law, passed in the summer of 2021, was “unconstitutionally vague” and in violation of the 14th Amendment.
The law had been passed after then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking federal funding for schools promoting divisive concepts rooted in sex and race.
In his ruling, Barbadoro highlights that the “banned concepts” are oblique in what they’re targeting, failing to provide teachers with clarity about how the “Amendments apply to the… topics they’re meant to address.”
The New Hampshire judge claimed the “law of clarity” led to confusion and created gaps those who enforced the Amendments were left to fill, resulting in “arbitrary enforcement.”
Previously, Moms for Liberty in New Hampshire had offered a $500 reward to anyone who caught a teacher breaking the rule, a move Republican Governor Chris Sununu described as “inappropriate.”
Gilles Bissonnette, legal director for the ACLU New Hampshire, described Tuesday’s ruling as a win for academic freedom in the Granite State and lauded the court for ending the “culture of fear and apprehension” in the state’s public schools.
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