Top court sides with parking meter ‘Robin Hooders’

MANCHESTER, N.H. — New Hampshire’s highest court on Tuesday largely sided with a group of activists known as “Robin Hooders,” finding that a city’s efforts to crack down on their practice of feeding strangers’ parking meters violated their free speech rights.

The activists have regularly fed parking meters in downtown Keene, a small city in southwestern New Hampshire, and placed cards on windshields with a picture of Robin Hood stating: “Your meter expired! However, we saved you from the king’s tariff!”

The merry band has also followed and at times confronted the parking enforcement officers, all the while recording their activities.

In 2013, the city of Keene sought to impose a buffer zone preventing the activists from interacting with or recording the officers on the grounds that they were creating a hostile work environment and thereby interfering with its contract with the employees.

However, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that the city could not justify the injunction on the basis of “tortious interference” in its contract with the officers.

Doing so, the court found, “would infringe upon the respondents’ right to free speech under the First Amendment.”

The activists are part of a loose confederation of radical libertarians known as Free Keene. Their fight against the city and its meter readers has gained national notoriety.