Hannah Meiselman

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I respectfully oppose HB 1217. New Hampshire’s Law Against Discrimination is built on a clear principle: people should be treated with equal dignity and protected from unequal treatment. HB 1217 creates broad new exceptions to that framework by authorizing public and private entities to classify individuals by “biological sex” in multi-user facilities and athletic settings, and by declaring that these classifications are not discrimination. This language risks undermining existing protections for transgender and gender-nonconforming residents, invites inconsistent implementation across institutions, and creates uncertainty for businesses, schools, and municipalities that must navigate overlapping state and federal civil-rights obligations. Rather than strengthening safety or privacy, HB 1217 introduces ambiguity into a well-established statute and opens the door to exclusionary practices that conflict with New Hampshire’s longstanding commitment to fairness.