Earlier this year, New Hampshire lawmakers banned transgender girls from competing on girls’ school sports teams and prohibited some gender reassignment surgeries for minors.

Those efforts will continue next year as several Republicans have filed draft legislation that could limit gender-affirming healthcare and revive a bill vetoed by the governor this summer that would have restricted access to bathrooms and locker rooms based on “biological sex.”

Here’s what to look for during the upcoming legislative session:

Healthcare limitations

Weare Republican Lisa Mazur submitted two bill requests that would affect gender-affirming healthcare. One is “relative to health care professionals administering hormone treatments and puberty blockers,” though it doesn’t specify what that would entail at this early stage in the legislative process. Mazur declined an interview for this story. Full-fledged bills being drafted by the state’s Legislative Services office will become public in late December or early January.

Other states have passed laws prohibiting transgender medical options, some of which are currently being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices heard arguments in early December on whether to uphold a Tennessee law that bars minors from receiving gender transition care including surgeries, hormone therapy and puberty blockers. The Supreme Court appeared inclined to side with the state.

Mazur’s same bill, according to the draft request title, would also relate to “school personnel attempting to influence a minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex.”

Another bill, also requested by Mazur, would ban gender reassignment top surgery for minors, expanding on a law passed this year that prohibits minors from receiving genital gender reassignment surgery.

Testing the waters

Whitefield Republican Rep. Seth King submitted two bill draft requests that would, in theory, impact gender identity legal options and protections. He doesn’t plan to file either of them as bills in the upcoming session, he said – these were more of an exercise in planning to see what that policy language might look like should he choose to pursue them down the line. He hopes to share the drafts with other lawmakers and “bounce ideas around,” he said in an email.

One of his hypothetical draft requests says it would remove gender identity from protections against discrimination, although specifics are unknown.

Protections against sex discrimination are enshrined in federal law, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that those protections also apply to discrimination over gender identity or sexual orientation, saying it’s impossible to discriminate against the latter two without also discriminating against the person for their biological sex.

King’s other draft request would require gender identification to show as either male or female on driver’s licenses and non-driver IDs. New Hampshire residents can currently use an “X” instead of “M” or “F” to identify their gender on their license as nonbinary. This would appear to remove the “X” option.

Reviving the bathroom bill

Rep. Jim Kofalt, a Republican from Wilton, will seek to revive a bill that passed the Legislature this year but was vetoed by Gov. Chris Sununu.

Kofalt said he asked the Legislative Services department to copy his previous bill exactly – it would change the state’s Law Against Discrimination by permitting the classification of people by biological sex in certain areas, like bathrooms and locker rooms, athletics and sporting events where biological males are “generally recognized” as having an advantage, and in correctional and health facilities where people may be held involuntarily.

It’s warranted, according to the previous bill, because it serves the “compelling state interests of protecting the privacy rights and physical safety of such persons and others.”

The bill elicited backlash from LGBTQ rights advocates, and Sununu ultimately vetoed it, saying it sought to address issues that weren’t occurring in New Hampshire and that it invited “unnecessary discord.”

Kofalt said his bill isn’t a mandate but would hand those decisions back to local towns, school districts and others. People on both sides of gender ideology issues have gotten too extreme, he said, and he views the bill as a “middle-of-the-road” solution.

“I think people want to be respectful of other people, whatever their lifestyle is and however they choose to live their lives, but there’s got to be some balance and mutual respect, and so that’s what I’m aiming for,” Kofalt said.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.