This story was originally produced by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an independent local newsroom that allows NHPR and other outlets to republish its reporting.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu signed a series of bills that will limit the rights of transgender youth Friday, banning transgender girls in grades 5 to 12 from participating in girls’ sports teams and prohibiting medical professionals from carrying out gender-affirming surgeries for minors.
Sununu also signed a bill that would allow parents to opt their children out of any public school instruction that features LGBTQ topics – and would require teachers to give parents at least two weeks notice before teaching such material.
But he vetoed a fourth bill, House Bill 396, that would have allowed businesses and government entities to discriminate on the basis of biological sex in bathrooms, locker rooms, sporting events, jails and prisons, mental health hospitals and treatment facilities.
Sununu released the decisions late in the afternoon Friday.
The first bill, House Bill 1205, will require all sports teams for grades 5 to 12 to be designated for “males, men, or boys,” “females, women, or girls,” or “coed or mixed.” The new law prohibits students of “the male sex” from participating on female teams. And it requires students to verify their sex by producing a birth certificate that demonstrates their biological sex “at or near the time of the student’s birth.”
Children whose birth certificate does not indicate their sex at birth, or which is not their original birth certificate “must provide other evidence” that demonstrates their sex at birth, the new law states. The cost of producing that evidence must be borne by the parents.
The law, which takes effect Aug. 19, allows any other student who claims they have been aggrieved by the failure of a school to follow the new requirements to sue for injunctive relief or damages.
And the law prohibits the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association and any other athletic association from taking action against a school for barring transgender girls from girls’ sports. The association is disallowed from “entertaining” complaints from transgender students who say their rights are violated.
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House Bill 619, the second bill Sununu signed, bars any physician from performing any “genital gender reassignment surgery” on children under 18. That includes vaginoplasties, defined as the surgical creation of a vagina form other parts of the body; phalloplasty, the surgical creation of a penis; and metoidioplasty, the transformation of a clitoris to a penis. Data suggests the surgeries are rarely performed on minors.
The law will make the practice of those surgeries “unprofessional conduct” and make doctors subject to disciplinary action before their licensing board. It would also allow the minor or their parent to sue a doctor that carried out such a surgery up to two years after the procedure.
Doctors will still be allowed to perform for minors circumcisions; surgeries to remove malignant, malformed or damaged genitalia; and reconstructive surgeries to address physical injuries, disease, and developmental issues.
“HB 619 ensures that life altering, irreversible surgeries will not be performed on children,” Sununu said in a statement. “This bill focuses on protecting the health and safety of New Hampshire’s children and has earned bipartisan support.”
Meanwhile, House Bill 1312, which Sununu also signed, expands the existing law requiring teachers to give advanced notice to parents about sex ed curricula and teaching materials, and applies it to all instruction of “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.” Parents would then have the option to opt their child out of that instruction, provided they find alternative instruction agreed to by the school district.
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