Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a bill Friday that would have permitted transgender people to be excluded from restrooms, locker rooms and other spaces that don't match their sex assigned at birth.
It was the third such bill Ayotte has vetoed in the past year — something she underscored in her veto message.
"I have continued to ask the Legislature to address this issue in a thoughtful, narrow way while protecting the privacy, safety, and rights of all Granite Staters," Ayotte said in a statement Friday afternoon. "Unfortunately, there is minimal difference between this bill, the bill I vetoed earlier this year, the one I vetoed last year, and the one vetoed in 2024 by Governor [Chris] Sununu. Trying the same thing again isn’t going to get a different result."
The bill would have created an exception to the state's anti-discrimination law, enacted in 2018, which protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity, among other characteristics. In addition to allowing businesses and organizations to separate restrooms, locker rooms, and jails by sex at birth rather than gender identity, the bill would have allowed schools to bar transgender girls from boys sports teams, and vice versa.
Advocates of the bill said it was needed to protect the safety of women and girls in public spaces. But opponents said it was a blatant effort to curtail the civil rights of transgender people.
While the Legislature can overturn a governor's veto with a two-thirds majority vote, that seems unlikely in this case given the vote margin by which it passed the House, 179 to 159.
