The leader of a neo-Nazi group that menaced people attending a drag queen story hour event has admitted that the group violated the state’s civil rights law.
In a July 30 press release, New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella announced that Christopher Hood and 19 members of the Nationalist Social Club-131 (NSC-131) admitted that their actions violated New Hampshire’s Law Against Discrimination “by attempting to coerce, intimidate, or compel a place of public accommodation to engage in unlawful discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity.”
Related
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Civil Rights Unit filed an enforcement action against the group in late 2023, following an incident the previous June in which Hood and his 19 co-defendants gathered outside of Teatotaller Café, where the drag queen story hour was taking place. According to Formella’s office, the group “surrounded the business, obstructed access, shouted homophobic slurs, banged on café windows, displayed anti-LGBTQ+ signs, and engaged in other conduct intended to intimidate patrons and disrupt the event.”
Video posted by one of the drag performers participating in the event showed the group, dressed in khakis and black hoodies, with their faces covered by gaiters, chanting and raising their arms in the Nazi salute.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
“We’ve got some verified Nazis today!” drag queen Juicy Garland tweeted from the event. “Golly, I didn’t order those.”
According to the Boston Globe, the June 2023 event was just one of several drag queen story hours NSC-131 — founded by former Patriot Front and Proud Boy member Hood in 2019 — disrupted or shut down between 2022 and 2023.
Following three years of litigation, however, the group has “ceased operations in New Hampshire,” according to the state attorney general’s office. Court filings indicate Hood has said he will no longer participate in organized hate activity, the Globe reports.
As part of the Final Decree resolving the state’s civil rights enforcement action against NSC-131, Hood must pay a $10,000 civil penalty, the maximum fine permitted by law, and complete 250 hours of community service. He and the 19 other co-defendants are permanently barred from engaging in unlawful discriminatory conduct in New Hampshire and may not come within 250 feet of any Teatotaller Café location or contact the business’s owner or employees. Formella told the Globe that the last two terms of the agreement also apply to members of NSC-131 who were not directly involved in the June 2023 stunt.
“No individual or organization has the right to threaten, intimidate, or coerce a New Hampshire business into violating the law or denying lawful access based on protected characteristics,” Formella said in a July 30 statement. “This resolution delivers accountability and sends the message that organized hate group activity that violates the law will not be tolerated.”
Formella told the Globe that getting Hood to admit to violating state civil rights law is a significant victory “in the greater context of our civil rights efforts.”
Formella’s office previously brought civil rights action against NSC-131 in January 2023 after members of the group hung a banner that read “Keep New England White” from a Portsmouth overpass during the summer of 2022. That case went all the way to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the prosecution was unconstitutional on free-speech grounds, according to the Globe.
A third lawsuit, brought in late 2023 by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, accusing Hood and another Massachusetts-based NSC-131 leader of repeatedly engaging “in violent, threatening, and intimidating conduct” at libraries hosting drag queen story hours and at hotels providing emergency shelter for immigrants, is still pending, the Globe reports.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.