Judge dismisses electioneering lawsuit filed by two GOP candidates against N.H. public library – The Boston Globe

In their lawsuit, Berry and Murphy objected to questions about abortion rights, public school funding, and LGBTQ+ issues, while also claiming the questionnaire would be illegal regardless of the topics addressed. They accused the library of violating the state law that prohibits public employees from using government resources for electioneering.

But only the New Hampshire Attorney’s General’s Office has authority to enforce state election laws, and nothing in the anti-electioneering statute even implies private parties have any legal right to file civil litigation of their own, according to Tuesday’s ruling from Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Michael A. Klass.

As a result, Klass concluded Berry and Murphy were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their case. He denied their request for a temporary restraining order and dismissed their lawsuit altogether.

Berry said he was “deeply disappointed that the judge sidestepped the core issue” in this case.

“While I respect the court’s decision, I fundamentally disagree with the notion that citizens cannot seek relief through the courts when public employees violate election laws,” he said.

Dianne Hathaway, director of the Goffstown Public Library, said her team appreciates the court’s expedited decision and remains confident library staff didn’t violate the law. Work on the questionnaire is “proceeding on schedule,” and library trustees will make the final decision on whether to publish the responses as planned, she said.

“Our goal is to post information by early next week,” she added.

A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Justice told The Boston Globe the DOJ’s Election Law Unit was still working on its response to a formal complaint regarding this dispute.

Murphy said Tuesday he hopes the attorney general will “do his job” and find that Goffstown Public Library violated the law.

In a preliminary assessment of the situation, Brendan A. O’Donnell, chief of the DOJ’s Election Law Unit, wrote in a Sept. 27 email that the library sent the questionnaire to all candidates on the ballot in local races for New Hampshire House and Senate and offered to publish their answers unedited.

“If a candidate disagrees with the premise or wording of a particular question, there is no reason the candidate could not use part of their answer to explain why they disagree with the premise of the question,” he wrote.

O’Donnell concluded municipal entities aren’t blanketly prohibited from engaging in candidate forums and questionnaires, though the law does impose limits on how employees may use government resources to talk about election-related issues.

Generally speaking, the type of electioneering that is off-limits for public employees using government resources is that which “expressly advocates for the success or defeat of a candidate or measure being voted at an election,” O’Donnell said via the DOJ spokesperson.

That initial assessment didn’t stop Berry and Murphy from filing their lawsuit without hiring an attorney to represent them.

In an interview after a court hearing Friday, Berry said the idea that a government entity would assemble this questionnaire is so wrong that he “shouldn’t need an attorney to fight it.”

“If this is allowed to happen and the questions are allowed to be biased, you can imagine what 2026 is going to look like or what the municipal elections are going to look like,” he said.

The anti-electioneering law says it’s a misdemeanor for any public employee to use government property or equipment “to act in any way specifically designed to influence the vote of a voter on any question or office.”

Berry argued that means a public library cannot collect and publish even basic biographical facts about candidates, such as their ages, without running afoul of the law.

“There is no information they can present that won’t in some way ‘influence the vote of a voter,’” he said during Friday’s hearing.

Steven M. Whitley, an attorney for the library, contended that his client seeks to help voters understand candidates’ positions on certain timely topics, not tell them which candidates to support or oppose.

“The library’s position is that the intent is to educate the public. That is the intent of the questions,” he said. “That is why they contain some topics that are politically charged.”

Of the 14 candidates who were invited to complete the library’s questionnaire, Hathaway said Tuesday the library had received responses from five Democrats and zero Republicans.

“However, since the published answers will be in a digital format, late responses can be added if candidates change their minds,” she added.

Two of the Democrats who responded to the questionnaire, F. Eric Emmerling and Marie B. Morgan, are running in Hillsborough County’s House District 44 against Berry and fellow Republican nominee Lisa Mazur. The district has two seats.

The other three Democrats who responded — Jim Craig, Judith Gaynor Johnson, and Melanie Renfrew-Hebert — are running with fellow Democrat Judi Lanza in Hillsborough County’s House District 29 against Republican nominees Joe Alexander Jr., Sheila Seidel, Henry R. Giasson III, and Sherri Reinfurt.

Michael York, the Democratic nominee challenging Murphy for his Senate District 16 seat, didn’t respond to the library’s questionnaire and has not responded to the Globe’s inquiries regarding this lawsuit.

Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.