Media Contacts:
Rep. JR Hoell
Rep. Andrew Prout
Rep. Barbara Comtois
Freedom Caucus Tri-Chairs
info@NHHFC.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 21, 2024
House Freedom Caucus Opposes Judicial Activism from the Bench Relative To School Funding
Yesterday, Judge Ruoff ruled that all excess SWEPT funds should be sent to the state overturning decades of precedent relative to donor towns. The ruling regarding government school funding of February 20, 2024, is an outrage that would cost taxpayers upwards of a billion dollars. Political matters such as this are wholly within the realm of the people and their representatives in the Legislature, not that of a single person legislating from the bench. The judge broke precedent in refusing to stay his own expansive order pending appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
Rep. Belcher (R), [Wakefield] of the House Education Committee, “It’s incredible that the court has calculated a supposed cost of an ‘adequate education’ based on funding our system as it currently exists. The current system is serially failing to deliver an adequate education according to outcomes – we are in a crisis of illiteracy and innumeracy.”
Rep. Karen Reid(R) [Deering], “We see our local government – run schools focusing more and more on turning the classroom into a therapeutic and medicalized environment, and a multiplication of departments, policies and personnel dedicated to divisive DEI programming. This is not a Constitutional education.”
Representative Belcher added, “It’s theoretically possible that the appropriate way to achieve better outcomes, and a truly adequate education, is to cut funding and thereby require the dissolution of divisive DEI programs and related positions that are eating up budgets.”
We call on the Supreme Court to stay this opinion until the case can be appealed and fully adjudicated. We call on the Governor and Executive Council to take no action until such a time that the Supreme Court has reviewed this matter. Finally, we call on all legislators, regardless of political orientation, to stand with us in defense of the powers rightly due this Legislature under the New Hampshire Constitution.
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The New Hampshire House Freedom Caucus is a grassroots organization consisting of legislators and private citizens, who believe in personal liberty and the traditional conservative “Yankee” values that made New Hampshire a great place to live.