Associated Press
FRANKLIN, N.H. — Officials in the city of Franklin, New Hampshire, have decided not to enforce a curfew on juveniles under 16 in the face of potential legal action by the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.
In a letter to civil liberties union legal director Gilles Bissonnette on Wednesday, Franklin’s lawyer said the City Council “regrets” to announce it will not enforce the curfew that barred juveniles from being on city streets after 9 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on weekends.
The mayor and council members say they do not want Franklin residents to bear the cost of defending against a lawsuit.
Bissonnette said in a statement Wednesday that parents are in the best position to decide when children should be home. He said the ordinance prohibited a 13-year-old from walking the family dog at 9:15 p.m. on a Tuesday.
“While the ACLU-NH recognizes the City of Franklin’s valid public safety concerns, parents and guardians are in the best position to know when children should be home, not the government,” Bissonnette said Wednesday.
The city council voted last month to reinstate the curfew it had suspended two years earlier over concerns about its enforceability. Violations amounted to a Class B misdemeanor punishable by affine of up to $1,200.
In their joint statement Wednesday, the mayor and city councilors called on state lawmakers to amend a law that authorizes such curfews, noting that nothing has been done by the legislature since a judge struck down a similar curfew in Keene in the 1980s. The court in that case ruled the ordinance “sweeps a broad range of innocent behavior into the category of prohibited conduct.”
“We firmly believe that the legislature, with appropriate assistance from the office of the attorney general, can address this issue for the safety and betterment of the state’s citizenry, particularly our juvenile population,” Franklin officials said in their statement.
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