Several bills focused on gender identity were on the table in the House Judiciary Committee last week, including bills that were amendments or variations on legislation Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed last year and earlier this month.
Aimee Terravechia, executive director of 603 Equality, an LGBTQIA advocacy group, described the hearing as, “a door of nearly identical policy that both the House and Senate insist on relitigating.”
One bill specifically calls for all references to gender identity be removed from state laws that outline protections against discrimination in law enforcement, healthcare, education, and business.
The main sponsor for the bill, Rep. Seth King, a Republican from Whitefield, said it would allow businesses to make up their own policies about things such as designating bathrooms and locker rooms by sex listed at birth, rather than gender identity.
Rep. Alice Wade, a Democrat from Dover who opposes the bill, said that it would allow anti-trans discrimination and remove protections for trans people.
“It's everything. Education, sexual assault, higher education.” Wade said, listing various statutes that include protections for people based on gender identity. “Everything repealed for protections for trans people. It's insane.”
King testified that he agreed his proposed legislation would be sweeping.
“If we remove the term gender identity from New Hampshire, it will allow for discrimination,” he said. “I believe fully that discrimination in and of itself is not a bad thing. We all discriminate all the time on many, many different items in our life.”
Chris Erchull, an attorney at GLAD Law who opposes the bill, testified that there was no reason to repeal protections that are already in place for trans people.
"Why would you want to make sure that transgender people can be denied the right to buy a house?" he said. "It just, it doesn't make any sense to repeal protections that are there for a vulnerable minority."
The committee voted against recommending the bill 14-0.
Two Republican so-called bathroom bills heard on Friday would allow restrictions to bathroom access based on sex assigned at birth.
One bill would allow governmental buildings and businesses to make policies classifying the use of locker rooms and other facilities by someone’s sex assigned at birth.
A similar bill was vetoed by Ayotte this year. The sponsor of the current bill, Rep. Jim Kofalt, a Republican from Wilton, included in the new bill an amendment that leaves room for facilities to have single-use bathrooms that are not restricted by sex assigned at birth.
Committee chair Rep. Bob Lynn, a Republican from Windham, said this could address Ayotte’s concerns.
“It says if there is a governmental facility, the governmental facility must have, in the same building, one restroom that is open to both sexes and that restroom would be available for use,” he said.
Another bill would require that some public and private facilities adopt policies that classify the use of restrooms and other spaces like locker rooms based on someone’s sex assigned at birth. It would also allow private entities to adopt similar policies.
Rep. Marjorie K. Smith, a Democrat from Durham who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, questioned whether legislation should be involved in these matters, noting that testimony from people from this and other hearings have centered on the idea that the government should not be involved in how people control their private lives.
“Who are we to decide that person X is entitled to protections but person Y is not?” she said. “Who are we to make that differentiation?”
Both bills were voted “ought to pass” by the Judiciary committee.
