On July 19, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed two anti-trans bills into law. The two bills, H.B. 619 and H.B. 1205, restrict access to gender-affirming care and limit sports participation for transgender athletes, respectively.
H.B. 619 bans minors from receiving gender-transition surgery and subjects physicians who provide referrals to potential disciplinary action. The bill, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2025, does not bar other forms of gender-affirming care — such as hormone replacement therapy or speech therapy.
“Adolescent genital gender reassignment surgery generally lacks both adequate information for informed consent and involves a high risk of coercion for parental consent when parents believe that they are faced with a choice between their child committing suicide or consenting to their child’s genital gender reassignment surgeries,” the bill states.
H.B. 1205, effective Aug. 18, requires schools to designate sports teams into one of three categories — “males, men or boys,” “females, women or girls” or “coed or mixed” — and requires trans students in grades 5-12 to compete in the category corresponding to their birth certificates. The restriction applies to both interscholastic sport activities and club athletic teams sponsored by or competing against a public school.
“As the debate over H.B. 619 and H.B. 1205 has played out in Concord and throughout the state, charged political statements have muddled the conversation and distracted from the two primary factors that any parent must consider: safety and fairness for their children,” Sununu wrote in a press release. “… New Hampshire always takes a balanced approach, and H.B. 619 and 1205 reflect commonsense, bipartisan solutions that reflect the values of parents across our state.”
Proponents of H.B. 619 argue that minors are too young to make an informed decision on gender-affirming surgery.
“It’s hard to believe that there’s a compelling medical reason that a minor child would require irreversible gender reassignment surgery before the age of 18,” State Rep. Kevin Verville, R-Rockingham, said. “The human brain doesn’t even fully mature until the mid 20s … so I don’t see why we wouldn’t protect children from such adult decisions.”
State Rep. Tony Lekas, R-Hillsborough, also said the decision to undergo gender-affirming surgery should be made as an adult — arguing that it would be “unethical” and “immoral” to allow a minor to undergo a “life-altering” surgery without “informed consent.”
He added that he believes it is “not unusual” for children to experience “some uncertainty [or] confusion about gender” as they grow up and undergo puberty.
“The vast majority of … kids in that situation — they sort it out,” he said. “If — once they reach adulthood — they’re still convinced that they want to be trans? Well, that’s up to them, and as an adult, they have the right to go down that path. But not as children.”
Opponents, meanwhile, say that the legislature is wrongly extending its purview to personal medical decisions, according to State Rep. Gerri Cannon, D-Strafford, who is a transgender woman.
“Medical professionals should have the right to determine what is good for the patient and what’s not, and the legislature is essentially taking that away,” she said.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, government professor and State Rep. Russell Muirhead, D-Grafton, wrote that he was “appalled” the governor signed the bills and will make it a “priority of [his] to reverse this legislation.”
“[The bills] do not address real-world problems that exist in the state of New Hampshire — nor are they meant to,” he wrote. “They rather express a desire to derogate and disdain transgender people — they are about stoking the hateful flames of a culture war.”
By limiting care, the bill sets a “harmful precedent” and exacerbates mental health problems for trans youth, Office of Pluralism and Leadership assistant director Angélique Bouthot wrote in an email statement to The Dartmouth. She called for Dartmouth students “to find a way to organize and protest against” recent anti-trans legislation like H.B. 619.
She also said the bill uses “stigmatiz[ing]” language like “genital gender reassignment surgery” to refer to gender-affirming care.
“It’s important to recognize the way that transgender young people are discussed and how this language further stigmatizes and ‘others’ gender expansive people,” she wrote.
Opponents of H.B. 1205, such as Cannon, argue that the bill is harmful to young trans people.
“I feel really bad for those girls,” she said. “They are well-behaved, well-adaptable to being accepted as another girl in their communities and their education environment and sports, but our legislature is deciding they shouldn’t — that they should be called out as abnormal.”
Proponents, meanwhile, assert that the bill is a protective measure for children. Lekas said H.B. 1205 concerns “fairness and safety.” He argued that allowing individuals assigned male at birth to compete against individuals assigned female at birth could be “potentially dangerous” and “certainly not fair.” He said that early development “with testosterone” yields “real physical effects” such as “muscle distribution.”
Verville also said it is “unfair” for transgender women to play on women’s sports teams.
“[The bill] is one bucket to protect women’s sports from being infiltrated by male players, who so far have vastly dominated … every female sporting event that they have participated in,” Verville said. “That is unfair to our daughters, to our sisters and for the women in our community.”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, transgender athletes do not have an unfair advantage in sports. Cisgender athletes frequently perform in athletic competitions the same as or better than transgender competitors.
Lekas added that it is “massively anti-feminist” to allow transgender women athletes to share “private spaces” — such as locker rooms or bathrooms — with individuals assigned female at birth.
“You’re taking away women’s private spaces,” he said. “They’re forced to be in there with people who are physically male. And that’s not right for them. It’s not good for them.”
The same day Sununu signed H.B. 619 and H.B. 1205 into law, he vetoed H.B. 396 — a bill that “permits classification of individuals based on biological sex in lavatory facilities and locker rooms, sporting competitions and detention facilities.” The legislation would have effectively banned trans people from using bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identities, NBC News reported.
“In 2018, Republicans and Democrats passed legislation to prevent discrimination because as I said at the time, it is unacceptable and runs contrary to New Hampshire’s Live Free or Die Spirit,” Sununu wrote in his veto message. “That still rings true today. The challenge with H.B. 396 is that in some cases it seeks to solve problems that have not presented themselves in New Hampshire, and in doing so invites unnecessary discord.”
According to Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ think tank, 26 states have implemented similar bans or limits on gender-affirming care. According to the New York Times, H.B. 619 is the first such ban in the Northeast. Moreover, 25 states have laws that ban trans youth from playing on sports teams that are consistent with their gender identities.
States began passing these bans relatively recently, according to NBC. Arkansas was the first state to limit gender-affirming care in 2021 and Idaho was the first to limit trans participation in sports in 2020.
Signing this bill marks an ideological shift for the governor, who in 2018 and 2019 supported legislation to protect transgender people. The 2018 law protected children against discrimination at school on the basis of their sex, race, gender identity and sexual orientation, according to the Associated Press. In 2019, another bill protected trans people against discrimination and banned conversion therapy for minors, according to GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, a legal advocacy group.
Casey Bertocchi ’26 contributed to reporting.
