Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

A Sole Proprietor Faces a Misdemeanor. An Incorporated Newsroom Faces a Felony.

If New Hampshire’s private investigator law reaches journalism at all, its penalty gets worse the moment a newsroom organizes itself. The carve-out meant to prevent that turns on a credential nobody in the state issues.

Two newsrooms in New Hampshire do identical work. One is a sole proprietorship. The other filed paperwork with the Secretary of State. Under RSA 106-F:14, if that chapter reaches them, the first commits a misdemeanor and the second a felony.

The sentence is short: unlicensed operation is “a misdemeanor for a natural person and a felony for any other person.” A sole proprietor is a natural person. An LLC, a corporation, and a nonprofit are each some other person. Nothing else changes. Same reporting, same records, same story, and a different class of crime.

Start with the part that should keep any newsroom out of this entirely.

The threshold, and why the carve-out should never matter

RSA 106-F:3 requires a license to engage in the business of a private investigative agency. RSA 106-F:2, XI defines that business as collecting information about people and organizations, for a fee, and it ends with five words that ought to settle the matter for the press: “for a private rather than a public interest.”

Publishing is a public interest. A story that runs for everyone is not a report sold to one client. On that reading a newsroom never reaches the licensing requirement, the exclusions in RSA 106-F:4 are belt and suspenders, and everything below is academic.

That reading has never been tested. Every section of this chapter carries one source line, 2019, 324:1, with no amendments, and I have found no reported decision construing any of it. The phrase also sits at the tail of a long, self-repeating definition, attached to a clause about making inquiries or collecting evidence, so whether it governs the whole definition is a question no court has taken up. And the first person to read this statute in a real dispute is not a judge. It is whoever opens the file at the State Police Permits and Licensing Unit.

Which is why the carve-out matters. It is the paragraph that mentions news outlets, and it hands that reader a puzzle.

Eleven exclusions name their third party. One asks for a credential.

RSA 106-F:4 lists fifteen exclusions. Twelve of them depend on somebody other than the person being excluded. That is ordinary drafting, and an earlier Granite State Report piece was wrong to suggest the press paragraph was unusual for leaning on a third party. It is not. What makes it unusual is how it identifies that third party.

Paragraph II points to a consumer reporting agency as RSA 359-B:3, VI defines one. Paragraph XIV points to a chartered financial institution as RSA 161-C:2, VI-b defines one. Paragraphs X, XII, and XIII point to attorneys and to a certified public accountant holding an active permit, all of them licensed by somebody. Paragraphs III, VI, and XI point to government agencies. Paragraphs IV, IX, and XV point to a generic business, a commercial or legal entity, a candidate, an entertainer, with no quality asked of any of them.

Then paragraph VIII excludes “persons engaged in reporting or providing information to an accredited news publication, media, or news outlet.” Alone among the twelve, it requires the third party to possess something. The chapter never says what accredited means. I have found no New Hampshire statute defining an accredited news outlet, and no body in this state that confers the status.

The drafters were capable of writing an exclusion that asks nothing of anyone. Paragraph VII covers persons collecting data for accident reconstruction or scientific analysis, with no employer and no client in the sentence. Paragraph XII covers attorneys and their firms’ agents, then adds “persons engaged in computer or digital forensic services, or computer network or system testing.” A freelance forensics examiner working alone is outside this chapter, unconditionally, with no credential asked of anybody. That clause sits four paragraphs below the press exclusion. Whoever wrote one wrote the other.

Two more things the sentence does not resolve

Read the paragraph again and the word accredited may not even reach the whole list. It sits in front of “news publication,” and whether it carries across the commas to “media” and “news outlet” is a matter of grammar nobody in authority has ruled on. On the narrow reading, only accredited publications are covered and everything else must qualify some other way. On the generous reading, any news outlet is covered and the credential problem shrinks to a single noun.

The preposition is the other open question, and it cuts both ways. The exclusion runs to persons reporting or providing information to an outlet. One reading is that the object has to be somebody else: a stringer files to an editor, a freelancer files to a publication, and a sole proprietor with no publisher above him has nothing to report to. The other reading is that a self-publisher provides information to his own news outlet, which he plainly does, and the preposition is no obstacle at all.

Nothing in the chapter pushes toward either one, and it is not silent about people who work alone. RSA 106-F:2, VIII defines an “Individual” as a licensee “who is not an employee and who has no employees,” and RSA 106-F:7, I prices an agency employing one licensed person at $150 against $350 for more than one. The one-person operation is a category this chapter knows and charges for. It is the one the press exclusion does not squarely address.

The penalty points the wrong way

Put the threshold question back with the penalty. The chapter’s reach over journalism is unsettled, the carve-out written to resolve it is ambiguous on three counts, and RSA 106-F:14 sets the cost of guessing wrong.

Forming an entity is the standard step for separating a business from the person who runs it, and for a newsroom reporting on named people that wall is the point. Under this chapter, building it moves the operator from a misdemeanor class to a felony class on identical facts. Incorporation is the responsible choice everywhere else. Here it reads as an aggravating factor.

What trips the chapter into play is not demanding, either. RSA 106-F:2, V says doing business means “advertising in New Hampshire or soliciting work, clients, or customers.” A page on a website asking readers to fund a records request satisfies that on its face.

Nobody in either chamber went on record

The chapter arrived as House Bill 115 of 2019, sponsored by Rep. Carol McGuire, Rep. Jordan Ulery, and Sen. John Reagan, and referred in both chambers to Executive Departments and Administration. It repealed and reenacted RSA 106-F whole. Gov. Chris Sununu approved it on August 16, 2019, as Chapter 324, with an effective date of July 1, 2019, already six weeks past by the time he signed.

The docket explains the quiet. The bill rode the consent calendar in both chambers. The House committee reported it ought to pass, 20-0, on consent; the House adopted it by voice vote. The Senate committee reported it 5-0 with an amendment, also on consent; the Senate adopted the amendment and the bill by voice vote, the House concurred by voice vote on a motion by Rep. Goley, and both chambers cleared the enrolled-bill amendment by voice vote. No recorded roll call appears in the bill’s official docket; the only tallies are two unanimous committee votes.

The bill’s analysis does not mention the press. It describes revised licensure for the three agency types and for “individuals employed as private investigators, security guards, and bail recovery agents.” A legislator working from that summary, on a consent calendar, would have had no reason to look for a press provision. Whether anyone raised one at either public hearing is a separate question, and the answer sits in hearing audio this article does not rely on.

Whether paragraph VIII was in the bill as introduced or arrived in one of its two amendments cannot be told from the enacted text, because a repeal-and-reenact prints everything in plain type with nothing marked as new. The committee file would answer it, and that file is a public record.

Three routes, none of them a lawsuit

The Commissioner of Safety adopts rules for this chapter under RSA 106-F:11 and RSA 541-A. A rule, or a posted interpretation, could say that a person who gathers and publishes their own reporting is outside the chapter whether they file to an editor or to their own site. That is a reading of text already on the books.

The General Court can rewrite the sentence, and the model is four paragraphs down. Paragraph XII protects the attorney, the firm’s agents, and the forensics examiner who answers to nobody. Paragraph VIII could protect the journalist, the outlet, and the person who is both. One line, before the 2027 session opens in January.

The advisory board established by RSA 106-F:15 reviews complaints and licensing issues. It could take the question up in public and put an answer in its minutes. None of these requires a prosecution or a test case with somebody’s liberty riding on it.

The part nobody has answered

No New Hampshire agency, so far as I have been able to determine, has ever told a reporter to get a private investigator’s license, and nothing here says one has. The question is what the text permits. A statute nobody has construed since 2019 is not settled, it is untested, and the people least able to test it are the ones this chapter describes most closely: the single-operator newsroom, the freelancer who incorporated for tax reasons, the two-person nonprofit with no lawyer on retainer.

Four questions decide it, and the text answers none. Whether “for a private rather than a public interest” keeps a publisher out of the chapter before the exclusions matter. Whether accredited does any work, and whether it reaches past the first noun. Whether the preposition requires a publisher above you. And whether the Department of Safety, any court, or the advisory board has ever construed paragraph VIII at all.

Granite State Report has drafted those questions for the Department and for William L. Chapman, director of the litigation department at Orr & Reno in Concord, whose biography says he has represented “national, regional and local media organizations and journalists in access cases” under the First Amendment, the federal Freedom of Information Act, and the Right-to-Know Law. No answer is in hand. When one arrives it runs here, and that includes a refusal to answer.

Until somebody answers, this chapter falls hardest on the newsrooms that took the responsible step, and the sentence written to protect the press asks for a credential that does not exist.

— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Statutory text is quoted from the New Hampshire General Court’s posted text of RSA 106-F and from the enacted final version of 2019 HB 115, Chapter 324. Legislative action is taken from the General Court’s bill docket and LegiScan’s record of the bill. This article corrects a characterization in Granite State Report’s September 16, 2026 piece on the same chapter: that piece implied the press exclusion is unusual among the fifteen for depending on a third party. Twelve of the fifteen depend on a third party, and the distinction is how paragraph VIII identifies it, as set out above and in the fact-check table. Nothing here is legal advice, and the editor is not a lawyer. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a note identifying what the article said, what is true, what changed, and when.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.