The ACLU of New Hampshire receives hundreds of requests for assistance each year, but because of limited resources only a small percentage actually become ACLU cases. We are unable to take many cases, even those concerning real injustices. If your complaint is not pursued by our office, it does not mean it is without merit.
In order to request legal assistance, you must fill out an online legal intake form. This form does not give legal advice, and you should not rely on it as legal advice. This form is not an offer by the ACLU to represent you. We cannot promise you that the information you provide will lead to any specific action on the ACLU’s part. You may fill out a secure online legal intake form or you may print out a form and mail it to:
ACLU of New Hampshire Foundation
18 Low Avenue
Concord, New Hampshire 03301
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR LEGAL PROGRAM
Please review this information before filing a request. Even if your complaint falls within these guidelines, filing a complaint does not guarantee that the ACLU will provide legal assistance. If you do file a complaint, please expect to wait up to 60 days before receiving a response.
The ACLU does not generally accept this kind of case:
Before accepting a case, the ACLU considers the following:
1. Does the case raise a civil liberties or civil rights issue?
Civil liberties include freedom of speech, press, religion, and association; due process; equal protection; and privacy. Civil rights include, for example, voting rights; discrimination based on disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion or national origin; and police reform. Because of the nature of civil liberties claims, the ACLU only rarely takes a case that does not involve the government.
2. How likely is it that a court will reach the civil liberties issue?
Generally, the ACLU takes cases that do not involve complicated disputes of fact, and prefers cases that involve questions of law only. An example of a factual dispute is an employment discrimination case in which the employer claims he fired the employee because of poor job performance and has credible evidence to support that claim, but the employee disputes the evidence and has credible evidence of her own. Because employment claims are usually very fact dependent, it is not often that the ACLU takes this kind of case.
3. The potential impact, including:
The U.S. Constitution and New Hampshire state law prohibit courts from jailing people for being too poor to pay their legal fines, but local courts throughout New Hampshire have been doing it anyway.
A case before the New Hampshire Supreme Court concerning the fair distribution of property in a divorce between two women who were in a 20+ year committed relationship and joined in a civil union/married...
On October 31, 2014, the ACLU-NH filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three New Hampshire voters—including one member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives—challenging RSA 659:35(I) on the grounds...
On March 10, 2015, the ACLU-NH wrote the Town of Alton explaining that the Town, in suppressing Mr. Clay's peaceful political speech, engaged in impermissible viewpoint discrimination in violation of the...
The ACLU-NH filed a lawsuit challenging HB1542, a new state law passed that imposes onerous restrictions on third parties by compressing the time period to collect the number of signatures necessary to get...
This case concerns the Farmington School District’s retaliation against a guidance counselor who sought independent legal counsel and successfully obtained a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to protect her...
