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:
Protestors charged with violating a curfew ordinance and criminal trespass when they set up an occupation of Veteran’s Park in Manchester appealed their case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court arguing that...
Richard Vaughan was jailed for failing to pay a fine — a fine he simply had no ability to pay because he is poor. The ACLU-NH filed an emergency petition for writ of habeas corpus and secured his release....
A woman who retained a private attorney instead of a public defender was denied funds to secure an expert in support of her defense, effectively denying her constitutional rights unless she waived her right...
A woman was denied the right to establish legal parentage to a child she conceived, parented, and co-parented with her ex-partner simply because her ex-partner was also a woman and the NH law for...
In a victory for free speech rights in NH, the NH Supreme Court held that a DMV regulation prohibiting vanity car license plates “which a reasonable person would find offensive to good taste” was...
