NH Republicans unite to pass bill targeting transgender student-athletes

CONCORD — As a bill to prohibit transgender students from competing on sports teams matching their gender identity advances in the New Hampshire Legislature, educators are expressing concerns, including about its enforceability.

“How are you going to check?” asked Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers New Hampshire, the second-largest teachers union in the state.

Senate Bill 375, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua, goes further than a similar House bill in that it would also prohibit transgender girls from entering female-designated locker rooms and bathrooms. It passed the Senate 14-10 in a roll call vote with all 14 Republicans in the Senate voting in support of the bill.

Bill to restrict trans student-athletes passes Senate with all Republican support

Sen. Ruth Ward, R-Stoddard, introduced the bill.

“Women have worked their way up little by little, they won the right to vote,” said Ward. “Most people recognized that women and men had different physical attributes.”

“Is it really discrimination, or is it a fairness issue?” she asked of the bill.

Lawmakers debated the bill for more than an hour.

Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, said there are very few transgender kids in New Hampshire. According to a 2020 report from the ACLU of New Hampshire, there are about 3,193 openly transgender nonconforming students in New Hampshire if the state follows the nationwide trend. According to the CDC, about 1.8% of high school students nationwide identify as transgender.

“They are not threats, they are the threatened,” she said.

Senate President Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, said the bill is about protecting “our daughters,” bringing up an article in the NH Journal that reported a “bearded” trans athlete injured “multiple girls.”

Sen. Becky Whitley, D-Hopkinton, shared statistics showing an increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ people.

“Shouldn’t we be protecting all students?” she asked.

Sen. Daryl Abbas, R-Salem, said the bill is not about targeting anyone and everyone has the same opportunity to play sports, but they must play on teams aligning with their “biological sex.”

In the end, the bill passed along party lines.

Educators oppose bill targeting transgender student-athletes

Educators like Howe and Megan Tuttle, the president of the NEA-NH teachers union, testified against the legislation in January, citing the importance of inclusion.

“As an educator, it is difficult to see a piece of legislation like SB 375 seek to exclude certain students from opportunities, like student athletics, rather than one that would aim to support and include each student so they can have the robust experience in school they deserve,” Tuttle wrote in the NEA-NH’s statement in opposition to the bill. “At a time in a child’s life where it is easy to feel isolated, athletics can help foster that sense of belonging which is so critical for a young person to thrive.”

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Many opponents of the bill spoke about this issue. Howes said it is unclear how the bill would be enforced if it was made law.

“If a child is not out to their school community or to the community outside their family that they are anything other than the gender they present as, who's going to check?” she asked.

“We don't keep birth certificates at school or on permanent file. And birth certificates do get amended by court order when someone chooses to go that route and ask for an amendment. So, it does present a quandary of how we are confirming what someone's biological sex at birth is if they appear to be something else,” said Howe. “If you want us to commit asking intrusive questions, we have protections under the New Hampshire constitution of privacy.”

Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, D-Portsmouth, introduced an amendment to the bill that would ensure schools retain the power to determine whether a student is eligible to compete in sports, saying athletic associations are best positioned to do this.

In that eligibility determination, the amendment said a student’s gender identity should not be the sole basis for exclusion from any sports program. However, if a student was solely trying to join a certain team for a competitive advantage, they would not be allowed to do so.

The amendment failed, 14-10, along party lines.

Jim Morse, superintendent of Oyster River Cooperative School District, said what this legislation is addressing has never been an issue in his district.

It’s not that there are necessarily zero transgender students in Oyster River schools, he said, but that, “when a youngster goes out to play a sport, we don’t ask whether they’re trans or not.”

Morse said the issue is not one that has been of importance to the New Hampshire School Administrators Association.

Morse is retiring from his position in June, but he said that if this bill went into law while he was still superintendent, he would wait for a parent to file a complaint to deal with it because he has “no issue with children participating in sports.

“People have a right to be who they are. And that for us to start discriminating based on somebody's identity is no different than discriminating against them in relation to their color or religion,” Morse said. “And I think it's really unfortunate that people are so afraid of other people that they want to pass legislation to prohibit people from being who they are.”

The bill is now headed to the House, which in March passed HB1205, a similar bill that focuses on prohibiting transgender girls from competing on female-designated school sports teams.

State Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, is the wife of Howard Altschiller, Seacoast Media Group's executive editor.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH GOP unites to pass bill targeting transgender student-athletes