Republican governor vetoes bill protecting women from ‘transgender’ men for third time

Liberal Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed legislation for the third time that would affirm jails and prisons can house gender-confused males separately from females. The law would also allow businesses to maintain the traditional distinctions between men and women’s bathrooms.

Even though the bill makes few requirements and simply provides legal protections for entities that want to separate spaces by sex, Ayotte said the law is still not narrow enough, as reported by the New Hampshire Bulletin.

“I have continued to ask the Legislature to address this issue in a thoughtful, narrow way while protecting the privacy, safety, and rights of all Granite Staters,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message. “Unfortunately, there is minimal difference between this bill, the bill I vetoed earlier this year, the one I vetoed last year, and the one vetoed in 2024 by Governor Sununu.”

“Trying the same thing again isn’t going to get a different result,” she stated. “For this reason, I have vetoed Senate Bill 552.”

New Hampshire State Representative Lisa Mazur is committed to protecting female spaces and promised to keep submitting the legislation.

“If these bills don’t pass, we’re going to bring them back next year,” Mazur said. “We’re going to keep going with this until something changes. We have to do this for our girls and our women.”

Last year Ayotte also sided with left-wing groups and against conservative activists and parents in vetoing bills relating to educational and medical freedom.

She vetoed a similar bill that would separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports team by sex. Ayotte called the law “exclusionary.”

“I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities,” Ayotte wrote. “At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

She also won praise from the state teachers’ union for vetoing a bill that would make it easier for parents to challenge pornographic books in libraries.

“Current State law appears to provide a mechanism for parents through their local school district to exercise their rights to ensure their children are not exposed to inappropriate materials,” she wrote, after explaining there is a process in place. “Therefore, I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness, particularly where the system created by House Bill 324 calls for monetary penalties based on subjective standards.”

As LifeSiteNews reported, the liberal governor also vetoed legislation, HB 358, that would have made it easy for parents to opt their children out of mandatory vaccines by simply stating they have a religious objection.

On the other hand, Ayotte did sign legislation last summer that affirmed the rights of parents to be involved with their kids’ education.

Though Ayotte generally voted pro-life while serving in the U.S. Senate, she pulled back from that position once she became governor.

She pledged to “veto” any legislation that made even minimal changes to the already permissive 24-week abortion ban on the books in New Hampshire.

“I know it’s been a few months since there have been all those ads on the TV, but if you send me legislation that further restricts access to abortion beyond our current law, I will veto it,” Ayotte pledged in January 2025.