With only a few weeks to go before the end of the legislative session, lawmakers pushed forward a number of bills with anti-LGBTQ+ proposals, largely concerning public schools.
Reports the New Hampshire Bulletin, the bills include:
Return of ‘divisive concepts’
The Senate moved to revive a 2021 law known to many as the “divisive concepts” law. House Bill 1792 would bring back that law, which forbids K-12 teachers from advocating for four broad concepts in a classroom relating to oppression and bias between people of protected characteristics, and includes professional disciplinary consequences for teachers who violate it.
A federal court struck down the previous law in 2024, finding that it was unconstitutionally vague for teachers and that the uncertainty could chill teaching. But Republican senators say this year they have made two major changes that address those concerns: They have removed the ability for people to sue teachers who violate the law, and they have introduced the requirement that any violation of the act by an educator must be “purposeful.”
HB 1792 passed the Senate, 16-8. The Senate’s version is a significant revision of the original bill, which was initially called the CHARLIE Act and which more explicitly prevented teachers from supporting Marxism and LGBTQ+ identities. The Senate’s vast changes — which nearly entirely replace the CHARLIE Act — now go to the House, whose members will vote on whether to accept the changes, reject them, or send them to a conference committee to debate further.
Book removals in schools
Republicans advanced another attempt at prior legislation: a bill requiring public schools to adopt clear pathways for parents to challenge and potentially remove from schools books and other materials they deem obscene.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a similar measure in July. On Thursday, the House passed a new version of that idea, Senate Bill 434. But the House also made changes to the Senate’s bill. Unlike the Senate’s version, the House-passed bill requires school boards to adopt a process for content material but does not prescribe how that process should work, and gives no mandatory timelines.
Those changes did not placate a group of advocacy organizations that denounced the bill Thursday, including 603 Equality; the ACLU of New Hampshire; the American Booksellers Association; the American Federation of Teachers New Hampshire; Authors Against Book Bans; Engage NH; EveryLibrary; MomsRising New Hampshire; and the National Education Association of New Hampshire.
“This bill seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, and it does so with redundant, unnecessary measures,” said Philomena Polefrone, associate director of advocacy for the American Booksellers Association, in a statement. “All it will do is confuse an issue that is confused enough.”
Teach to parent disclosures
The House approved Senate Bill 430 Thursday, a bill that would require teachers to respond to all written inquiries sent by a parent or guardian requesting information about their child, in a 193-163 vote. The bill follows years of Republican attempts to create a disclosure requirement for teachers in past “parental rights” bills.
LGBTQ+ advocates and Democrats have raised alarms about those bills, arguing they would force teachers to “out” students to their parents if those students disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity to the parent, even if the student explicitly asked the teacher not to. Supporters say they are merely meant to empower parents to ask for information to better guide their children.