State Rep. Ellen Read, a Democrat from Newmarket, New Hampshire, was clocked doing 107 miles per hour in a 65-mph zone on Interstate 93 in Windham on December 2, 2024. She was driving a 2009 Toyota Yaris with over 440,000 miles on it.
Her defense wasn't that the radar was wrong. It was that the deputies had no right to pull her over in the first place.
Read argued that Part II, Article 21 of the New Hampshire Constitution — ratified in 1784 — protects legislators from being "arrested, or held to bail, on mesne process, during his going to, returning from, or attendance upon, the Court." In her reading, that 240-year-old provision meant sheriff's deputies were constitutionally barred from stopping her on her commute to legislative duties. "The plain reading of the Constitution says that legislators cannot be stopped on their way to or from their duties," Read told Fox News. She added, "It says nothing of being ticketed or arrested at the end of the commute, and nothing about prosecution."
The court disagreed. Read was found guilty of negligent driving and fined $1,240, with $620 deferred on the condition she complete a safe-driving course and rack up zero additional moving violations over the next two years.
That condition didn't stick. In June 2025, Read was pulled over again — this time doing 92 mph in a 65-mph zone in Londonderry. She now faces a pending speeding charge there as well, after the presiding judge recused himself in April and the case awaits rescheduling for a bench trial.
Read appealed her legislative privilege argument all the way to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the court declined to hear it.
Bob Lynn, former chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and current Republican state representative, offered a blunt assessment on the privileged Democrat, "Even if there were something to her argument that she can't be kept from going to the State House or returning from the State House by being arrested, I don't think that that means she can't be prosecuted for her behavior," Lynn said. He added: "It strikes me that nobody should be driving at 100 miles an hour, and the last person that should be doing that is a state rep."
Read, for her part, has characterized the entire episode as a "non-scandal that has attempted to be drummed up against me." She told the Concord Monitor that she shows up, does the work, and gets "$100; $60 in mileage every day that I go to the State House to do my Zooms and emails." According to the Monitor's reporting, Read has logged $19,000 in gas mileage reimbursement this term alone.
That's a useful detail. A lawmaker reimbursed $19,000 for driving to and from the State House is simultaneously arguing that the state has no authority to regulate how she drives to and from the State House. The constitutional provision she cited was written in 1784, when "going to the Court" meant a horse on a dirt road, not a quarter-million-mile Yaris doing triple digits on an interstate.
The argument Read actually made was narrower than the headlines suggest. "It was always the commute itself that was meant to be protected," she clarified. "Not the legislator protected from breaking the law." But even that distinction collapsed when the courts looked at it. A privilege designed to keep the King's agents from blocking colonial legislators from reaching their assembly doesn't convert into a blanket immunity from traffic law. The courts said so. The state Supreme Court declined to say otherwise.
Read still holds her seat. The negligent driving conviction stands. The second speeding charge is pending. And a former chief justice of her own state's highest court called her behavior "very irresponsible."
She took a provision meant to protect democracy from tyranny and tried to use it to protect herself from a speed limit. The Constitution survived the attempt. Whether the Yaris does is another question.
