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New Hampshire’s Unconstitutional School Censorship Law Threatens Teachers and Students
On January 17, 2025, the National Women’s Law Center, Public Justice, and 24 civil rights organizations, along with Hogan Lovells US LLP, filed an amicus brief in the First Circuit in Local 8027, AFT-New Hampshire v. Edelblut. In this case, New Hampshire public school educators and their union are challenging a state censorship law that bans teaching a number of concepts, including race- and sex-based discrimination. We filed our brief to support their argument that this law is unconstitutional, wrong, and harms teachers and students.
New Hampshire’s law is based on a now-rescinded Trump administration executive order issued in 2020 that cut off funding for what it called “anti-American propaganda,” including “critical race theory.” The New Hampshire law bans teaching several concepts, including that people should be discriminated against because of their sex, race, or other characteristics. Even though that might sound like a good thing, the law was intended—and is being used—to ban teaching about the reality of discrimination. Under this law, educators who teach about discrimination can be sued and potentially have their licenses revoked—meaning they’ll no longer be able to teach in New Hampshire. This intentionally makes teachers afraid to discuss race and sex discrimination, both past and present. How, for example, can you talk about the history of slavery and Jim Crow without mentioning that people supported discrimination based on race?
And those fears aren’t imagined. Under this law, the New Hampshire Department of Education investigated a teacher for showing her class the music videos of “Formation” by Beyoncé and “This is America” by Childish Gambino and asking the class to compare the videos to works from the Harlem Renaissance. Other teachers have received advice from their school district to restrict lessons about race and LGBTQIA+ issues to avoid punishment.
The message that this sends—that talking about race or LGBTQIA+ issues is not just wrong but illegal—profoundly harms students. It not only censors important classroom learning and discussions about current issues, but it also makes teachers afraid that they’ll be punished if they intervene in incidents of bullying based on race, sex, or sexual orientation. It sends students of color and LGBTQI+ students a message that they and their histories are not valued—and that their state’s government is so opposed to their existence that it will punish teachers for even talking about them or intervening to protect their rights. It will alienate these students from their school communities and will foster bullying and discrimination.
Thankfully, the lower court in this case recognized that this law is unconstitutional. We hope that the court of appeals will, too, because students’ educations are on the line.
