The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is required by law to offer legal opinions on “any question of law” submitted by either branch of the Legislature.
Historically, those opinions are public, and even posted on the Attorney General’s website.
Yet in the case of the attorney general’s surprise reversal that a bill to give families public money to send children to private schools – including religious ones – is constitutional, the state’s top public lawyers want to keep their legal reasoning private.
The Monitor filed a right-to-know request in February seeking all documents relating to the AG’s analysis of the legislation, Senate Bill 193. In response, attorneys for the agency released a small batch of emails. Some were routine correspondence, and some dealt with a tussle between the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and the department about releasing a related document. But none dealt directly with the agency’s legal analysis of the bill. Read more…