Being a lawful gun owner doesn’t make you constitutionally suspect. Exercising one constitutional right doesn’t mean you’ve surrendered another.
New Hampshire school officials have formally admitted that they violated former student Jack Harrington’s Fourth Amendment rights when they searched his pickup truck after learning that he lawfully owned a handgun.
The admission resolves Harrington v. Crawford, a federal lawsuit supported by the Second Amendment Foundation. In a stipulated declaratory judgment, Hillsboro-Deering School District Superintendent Jennifer Crawford and Hillsboro-Deering High School Principal James O’Rourke agreed that the April 24, 2025, search of Harrington’s truck and glove box was unconstitutional.
The agreement also states that the search failed to satisfy the lower “reasonable suspicion” standard used for ordinary school searches and that Harrington had committed no illegal or unlawful conduct that justified it.
By Duncan Johnson
