There are 6 nearly identical pieces of legislation making their way through the NH House and Senate. Let's remind Governor Kelly Ayotte’s that as recently as February, she's vetoed similar legislation. These bills, seek to legalize discrimination for bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and prisons on the basis of "biological sex" as defined as only "male" and "female,” completely erasing the scientific reality of intersex individuals. These discriminatory policies have no place in NH, and create real world privacy and safety concerns for all Granite Staters.

We need to stop HB1442, HB 1447, HB 1299, HB1217, SB552 and SB459.

Why this matters:

Legislation like this is divisive and discriminatory. These kinds of identity politics are being prioritized over solving real issues facing Granite Staters. Our trans community is being unfairly targeted and singled out by a vocal political minority who wants to sow fear in our state. Trans people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and should be allowed to participate fully in public life.

This legislation makes us all less safe. Safety is important to all of us, and that’s why there are already laws to protect against harassment, and safeguard folks for safety and privacy concerns. Targeting a group of our population on the basis of how they publicly present creates situations that make us all less safe to participate in public life. It will lead to the policy of women’s bodies and presentations, as we saw recently with the Liberty Hotel incident. It creates an expectation that women must present a certain way in order to be “read” as female and gain access to what these bills designate as “private spaces.” Enforcement of these bills creates privacy and safety concerns for all.

Legislation like this is redundant and unenforceable. There are already safety and privacy laws meant to protect all people. We don’t need bathroom bans to keep us safe, and we don’t need legislators trying to relitigate the same failed and unenforceable policies again and again. We’ve already seen in other states that these types of bans are widely unenforceable, and we’ve seen in our own state two different Republican governors say NO to bathroom bans and the attempt to segregate spaces on the basis of a middle-school understanding of biology.