Senator Debra Altschiller

Dear Chairman Lynn and Honorable Committee Members, When SB 552 came before the Senate Judiciary Committee we were asked to consider a simple question posed to us by a member of the House of Representatives. In her very powerful testimony she asked the Judiciary committee "What restroom should I go to?" What a question to have to consider. Under SB 552, if a business posted a sign — biological sex only — she would face the very real possibility of being challenged, removed, or humiliated simply for trying to use the bathroom. That is not a hypothetical. It’s happening already. It happened at The Liberty Hotel in Boston last May, Ansley Baker and her girlfriend, Liz Victor, both cis women, tried to have a fun afternoon at the hotel’s Kentucky Derby party. Until they went to the ladies room. Ansley was in a stall with her pants down and Liz was washing her hands when a security guard came roaring in and began banging on the stall door. After screaming at Ansley and accusing her of being a man, the security guard made a scene escorting her out of the building while patrons in the lobby yelled at her with “Get him out of here,' and “'He's a creep,' The hotel has already paid $10,000 to settle that claim. Somebody thought Ansley, a cisgender woman with short hair, looked too masculine. So that’s what this bill invite into every locker room, every school, every public space in New Hampshire. We have a good law against discrimination. It was passed in 1992. Gender identity protections were added in 2018 — with bipartisan support, signed by a Republican governor. The law exists because this legislature recognized a fundamental truth: that the dignity and safety of every resident of this state is a matter of public concern. Not a courtesy. Not a preference. A matter of law. RSA 354-A:1 says, plainly, that discrimination on the basis of gender identity threatens the rights and proper privileges of our inhabitants and menaces the institutions and foundation of a free democratic state. Those are not idle words. They are findings of fact by this legislature. And SB 552 asks you to carve an exception right through the heart of them. The sponsor of this bill testified that he believes SB 552 "is a middle ground." He said "it doesn't mandate anything". He said it simply allows businesses and organizations to classify people by biological sex without legal consequence. Translation: NH should endorse just a little bit of discrimination. This is what that means in practice. It means a gym, a school, a church, can post a sign that says: you do not belong here. And the state of New Hampshire will hold them harmless for it. It means a trans woman who has lived as a woman for years, who carries a driver's license that says female, who presents in every way as a woman — can be removed from a women's restroom by a security guard, dragged out in front of a crowd, left sobbing on the sidewalk — and the business faces no liability whatsoever. This legislature has been here before. Several times, in fact. And each time, the person responsible for signing bills into law has looked at this language and said: no. Governor Sununu vetoed a nearly identical bill in 2024. He didn't mince words. He wrote that the bill "runs contrary to New Hampshire's Live Free or Die spirit" and "seeks to solve problems that have not presented themselves." A Republican governor, using our state's defining phrase, to reject this approach. Then Governor Ayotte vetoed House Bill 148 in 2025. She acknowledged — and I want to be fair to her — that she sees legitimate privacy concerns in some of the underlying issues. But she vetoed it anyway, writing that the bill was "overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens." Then just days before the hearing for Senate Bill 552, — she vetoed Senate Bill 268! Her statement was direct: "I made it clear this issue needed to be addressed in a thoughtful, narrow way that protects the privacy, safety, and rights of all Granite Staters. Unfortunately, there is minimal difference between Senate Bill 268 and the bill I vetoed last year." Minimal difference. The governor's own words. And yet here we are again, with SB 552 — which a member of the judiciary committee noted, side by side, is functionally identical to the bills that came before it. This legislature has now tried to override those vetoes. Twice. And failed. Twice. Because even within this body, there are not enough votes to change the law for just a little bit of discrimination. So the question before this body isn't really whether this bill reflects sound policy. Two governors of the same party as its sponsors have already answered that question. The question is whether this committee will keep sending the same rejected bill back through the process — putting transgender Granite Staters through hearing after hearing, year after year — in hopes that something eventually changes. The argument for this bill rests on fear. Fear that biological males are in the exact testimony of the sponsor at the Senate hearing "putting on a little make up and pink shorts and entering women's spaces causing harm". I will not dismiss the genuine distress of women who testified to having had frightening experiences with men. Those experiences are real and they matter. But fear, however sincere, is not the same as evidence. And as Governor Sununu wrote, this bill seeks to solve problems that have not presented themselves. What the evidence actually shows is that transgender people are the ones being assaulted. They are more than four times as likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population. When forced into facilities that don't match their lived identity, victimization rates are not low — they are catastrophic. In prison settings, transgender women housed with men face sexual assault at rates approaching fifty percent. The GLAD attorney who testified in the Senate hearing identified specific provisions in existing New Hampshire law — RSA 354-A:18, 354-A:15, 354-A:27 — that already exempt religious organizations from civil rights liability. The concern raised about churches and synagogues? Already addressed. Already in the law. This bill wants to solve a problem that the law already solved. And what about enforcement? The sponsor, pressed on this point, said: "I don't know that, you can do body checks." BODY CHECKS? That's the honest answer. Because there is no workable enforcement mechanism. What this bill actually produces is not safety — it's vigilantism. Strangers policing other strangers in bathrooms. Security guards making snap judgments about who looks female enough. Cisgender women — tall women, short-haired women, broad-shouldered women — caught in the crossfire. One person who testified before the Senate committee said it plainly: she is the person who gets removed from bathrooms. Not because she is transgender — she is not. But because she wears a hat and keeps her hair short. It has happened to her in every state she has lived in. It happened during jury duty. It happened when she went to get a COVID vaccine. This bill would give every business in New Hampshire legal cover to do exactly that to her, and to every woman like her. New Hampshire's Law Against Discrimination is not a mistake to be corrected. It is the foundational recognition that all of our residents — regardless of age, sex, race, creed, disability, or gender identity — deserve to move through public life with dignity. Honor the law we have. Honor the people it was written to protect. And let's stop making them come back here and defend their right to exist — year after year after year. Please find SB 552 Inexpedient to Legislate. Thank you Senator Debra Altschiller