Friend,
The New Hampshire House Education Committee voted yesterday, and it’s a split decision – a 10-10 vote on how to recommend the full House votes on SB 272, the so-called “parental bill of rights” that singles out trans, gender nonconforming, and questioning students for a special level of surveillance and requires teachers to “out” students if parents ask or be sued. It also notifies parents automatically of club attendance, targeting Gender-Sexuality Alliances specifically.
We don’t know the date it will be scheduled for a full House vote yet, but we’ll be sure to let you know ASAP when we do. It will most likely be a Thursday in May. We’ll organize a strong presence at the state house that day!
In the meantime, we are asking everyone to contact their own state representative(s) and ask them to vote against SB 272. Not sure who your rep is? Find them here. Even if your representative is strongly against the bill, we need to make sure they plan to show up to House session the day of the vote – attendance makes the difference with bills like these.
- SB 272 singles out transgender students for a special level of surveillance. The authors of this bill chose to list many rights parents already have. Essentially the only new rights articulated in the bill are about gender identity and expression. The bill additionally creates a new mandate that club attendance is tracked, directly targeting Gay-Straight Alliance or Gender-Sexuality Alliance clubs (GSAs). It says that teachers can be sued if they do not answer parents’ questions “truthfully and completely” – at a time when our schools are experiencing widespread teacher shortages. This may sound like a good thing, but a plain reading of the text means that Teacher A has to be able to answer truthfully and completely about what Teacher B observed three weeks ago. That’s an overly broad mandate of surveillance targeted at trans students.
- Proponents of this bill are downplaying the unfortunate reality that young people are still mistreated, abused, kicked out of their homes, or sent to conversion therapy out of state just for being who they are. Waypoint tells us that 25% of the young people in their shelter are LGBTQ. The amendment to this bill says it provides an exception to the forced outing requirements for “clear and convincing evidence of abuse or neglect” but we know many queer and trans people who were abused in ways that didn’t show clear evidence to people very close to the family, let alone teachers. Plus, the “clear and convincing” standard writes a higher standard into the law than the current standard (“a preponderance of evidence.”)
We’re organizing a community call and phonebank into some of the districts where we know representatives are on the fence. If it’s your first time phonebanking, we’ll train you and practice before you make your first call! The Boston Globe just reported on some of the swing votes and our opposition’s outreach to them. A handful of calls or emails from people in those districts could make the difference.
Register to join us on Zoom, Tuesday May 2nd from 6:30-8 PM.
Together, we can defeat attacks on LGBTQ students.
–Team 603 Equality
