Why are there so many bills about gender identity in New Hampshire? Experts weigh in

CONCORD — Wearing a purple sweatshirt with the words “Protect Trans Kids,” Kamren Munz sat in front of the New Hampshire House Education Committee.

“It is not likely I will change anyone’s mind since this is a performance day for all of us,” Munz told state lawmakers on April 22. “We the public parade in front of you telling you why we are right, you cast a vote regardless."

Munz, a transgender person and a former art teacher, was testifying against Senate Bill 341, legislation that would require school employees to respond truthfully to written requests made by parents about their children. Opponents say it could out students who are gay or transgender before they are ready.

The frustration in the room was palpable as speakers waited their turn, many of them having come to the State House several times over the last couple months to testify for or against several bills New Hampshire lawmakers have introduced this year regarding gender identity.

In addition to SB 341, the legislation includes bills banning transgender girls from competing on female-designated sports teams (House Bill 1205, SB 375 and SB 524), prohibiting gender-affirming care for those under 18 (HB 619), and rolling back nondiscrimination protections by permitting classification based on sex assigned at birth in places like bathrooms and detention facilities (HB 396).

The number of bills is a marked increase from years past, said Southern New Hampshire University civic scholar Dean Spiliotes, and it's following a national trend.

New Hampshire has typically been a libertarian state, with the Legislature for years focused on issues like Second Amendment rights and taxes. But now mixed in are an influx of bills related to gender identity.

“My sense is what we're really seeing here is a continuation of the nationalization of state legislative politics,” Spiliotes said. “This kind of gender identity, social war stuff, and also like book banning, all that stuff, parental rights, that's all kind of seeped in from this sort of national ideological echo chamber.”

The right’s national campaign against transgender rights

On June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, social conservatives won a major battle over abortion rights — and lost an issue that had galvanized their supporters for years.

“For 50 years or like 40 years, they kind of ginned up outrage over the Roe v. Wade decision. And with the Dobbs decision, that, I think, has placed conservatives on the defensive,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth College who specializes in evangelicalism and politics in America. “They had to look for another issue that would rile up their base and keep them energized.”

Abortion wasn't the only issue needing a replacement. Terry Schilling, the president of the Americans Principles Project, a social conservative think tank, told the New York Times last year that after gay marriage was legalized in 2015, they “needed to find an issue the candidates felt comfortable talking about.”

That issue, it appears, was transgender identity.

Public opinion on gender identity and transgender issues is complex, perhaps making it the perfect target for politicians. A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found while 64% of U.S. adults favor laws that would protect transgender people from discrimination, 54% of that group also thinks society has either gone too far or has been about right in terms of acceptance of people. Almost 60% of Americans favor requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth.

Voting on transgender legislation hasn't always fallen completely along party lines. In New Hampshire, 12 Democrats in the 400-member House voted in favor of banning gender-affirming care for minors.

Now, at least 22 states nationwide have bans on gender-affirming care for children, and 24 states ban transgender students from participating on a sports team that aligns with their gender identity. New Hampshire is considering both this year.

Why are there so many bills about transgender rights in New Hampshire right now?

With its libertarian streak, New Hampshire has tended to be a little different from other states that have passed legislation regarding transgender people.

“New Hampshire happens to be the only state with a Republican governor, Republican-dominated House, and Republican-dominated Senate that does not yet have a single anti-trans law on the books,” said Chris Erchul, an attorney for GLAD, a legal rights organization that focuses on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “Despite the fact that for five years there's been significant efforts in New Hampshire to introduce and pass legislation to that effect, it hasn't happened.”

But this year, Erchul said the legislation feels more fervent. While there has been legislation banning transgender girls from girls’ sports teams that failed in the past, this year there were three almost identical bills filed to do just that. (SB 524 was killed by the Senate, SB 375 has been recommended for interim study by a House committee, and HB 1205 was set to be heard by the Senate Tuesday.) Erchul sees the legislation as targeting a small group of transgender youth, coming from "a fear of the unknown."

Spiliotes said he too noticed a change in January when he saw at least a half dozen significant LGBTQ+-related pieces of legislation introduced in New Hampshire.

He said while the national trend has been a little slower to take hold in New Hampshire, the election year has created the perfect storm.

“I think you have the combination of nationalization and election-year politics and mobilization and the culture wars,” Spiliotes said. “All of that is mixed together to really highlight these issues, whether or not they're typically the kinds of issues that would be on the front burner in New Hampshire under other circumstances.”

Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, said that it's become a more prevalent issue in the state as it has flowed down from a national level. He thinks the increase in legislation is working to address the "gray area" in questions like who can use what bathroom and who can play what sports.

"Outlining that may be a good thing to do so people understand what is allowable and what's not," Ager said. "Sometimes you need to have legislation to clarify what people and organizations and businesses and schools and medical facilities should be doing."

Sen. Timothy Lang, R-Sanbornton, said he filed his bill, SB 524 (later killed and merged a nearly identical bill, SB 375, submitted by Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua), to get ahead of safety and fairness concerns he and his constituents saw in women’s sports throughout the country.

“In conversations with people, it's highlighted mostly by national events, right? People are asking questions based on Lia Thomas, and those kinds of national news stories,” Lang said, referencing a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who was the first openly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I title in 2022. “It may not necessarily be the people looking in New Hampshire, but looking at what is New Hampshire going to do to fix this, to make sure it doesn't happen here.”

How national politics affect transgender policies

Issues taking hold nationally means that it’s increasingly common to see identical legislation introduced into different state legislatures, Spiliotes said. In New Hampshire, many of the bills relating to transgender rights use language that mirrors those in other states.

Idaho, the first state to bar transgender girls from participating in sports that aligned with their gender identity, called its law the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.” In 2023, Texas Gov. Chris Abbott signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act.” New Hampshire bills SB 524 and SB 375 were both given the title the “Protection of Women’s Sports Act.”

Spiliotes and others said the spread of these similar laws is sometimes coordinated by national groups, like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) or the Heritage Foundation, though they don't know if such groups are responsible for the legislation in New Hampshire. Lars Dalseide, the director of policy advancement and media relations at ALEC, said it has no policy directives on this issue. The Heritage Foundation did not return a request for comment, but its website states they “work with lawmakers to implement Heritage Foundation solutions” and offers what it calls solutions on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Lang said he generated SB 524 himself, looking at other states’ bills when writing the bill and taking the pieces he thought were appropriate for New Hampshire.

Lang, who is a father of four with two daughters, said he believes legislation on transgender athletes in sports is important in keeping opportunities fair for girls in sports after puberty, something he sees as upholding Title IX. After filing the bill, Lang said, his inbox filled up with more responses from people who were in favor of it than opposed. But he also admitted that support might have some to do with the circles he's in.

“I do recognize that this is one of those, it's about who you hang around with sometimes,” Lang said. “So, I tend to be around more conservative elements and they support that, the idea of fairness in competitive sports that when you know you have a physiological advantage, we should not put girls at (a disadvantage).”

It’s all a reflection on the ongoing nationalization of politics, Spiliotes said: Due to the rise of the internet, social media, and digital communications, there’s an increase of people who exist in information ecosystems that make them believe certain legislation or actions are essential to preserving their version of life in America.

“If you're plugged into these larger information ecosystems, it becomes important to you, you may think it's important, you may genuinely believe, for whatever reason that it's important either to introduce it or to oppose it,” Spiliotes said. “You see similar effects on either side of the issue.”

Where do New Hampshire voters stand on transgender issues?

If the election year is one of the factors driving the introduction of legislation concerning transgender identity, the question is if voters will respond affirmingly.

Lang said concerns his constituents raised while he was campaigning inspired him to pursue the issue. But New Hampshire political pundits aren’t so sure it will translate to the voting booth.

Another wrinkle is that New Hampshire has moved to the political middle over the past few decades. The state government is controlled by the GOP, but the state's delegation in the U.S. Senate and House are all Democrats. And New Hampshire is tied for the least religious state in the country, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll.

Transgender identity issues have especially resonated with white evangelical voters, who now make up a large part of the Republican base. Sixty percent of all U.S. adults think that a person’s gender is determined by their sex assigned at birth, according to the Pew Research Center. Among white evangelical voters, that number rises to 87%.

But New Hampshire has very low levels of evangelical voters, with just 8% of people in New Hampshire identifying as white evangelical Protestant compared with 14% of all Americans.

New Hampshire is an outlier in that way and others, said Chris Galdieri, a professor of American government at St. Anselm College.

“The state's motto is 'live free or die,'” Galdieri said. “And so, I feel like these sorts of bills really, you know, they just don't fit the political culture of the state at large.”

On the other hand, Spiliotes said that nationally, these issues have been highly mobilizing. In New Hampshire, too, he thinks there’s always some portion of the electorate that will see these issues as critical markers.

This could be especially helpful for candidates in a state like New Hampshire, where the 400 state representatives can sometimes struggle to be known at all, said Galdieri.

“How it's actually mobilizing voters I'm still unclear about,” Spiliotes said. “I imagine this mobilizing for some portion of voters on both sides, whether it's led to a fundamental change in how voters decide? It still feels a little too new.”

Ager thinks it will depend on whether people in New Hampshire think there's a problem. The primary issues for New Hampshire voters, in his mind, are immigration, crime and homelessness, rather than transgender rights.

Balmer, the Dartmouth professor, isn’t convinced it’s a winning issue in New Hampshire. But maybe, he said, politicians in New Hampshire are doing what conservative groups did at the national level when they needed to find a new issue to motivate their voters.

“I think what we've seen is that politicians and political parties, maybe even especially those on the conservative side, throw things against the wall and see what sticks. And you know, maybe this is going to work for them because it seems to be working elsewhere,” said Balmer. “And why not try? I'm guessing that's their thinking, 'Let's give it a shot and see if we get any traction on this.'”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH Republicans file several gender identity bills. Here's why