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New Hampshire
Protestors station ‘genital observation police’ outside N.H. State House restrooms as lawmakers OK bathroom bill – The Boston Globe
CONCORD, N.H. — When lawmakers reported to the New Hampshire State House on Thursday morning, those who hoped to freshen up before the legislative session began were met with an unusual sight at the restroom doors: guards standing sentry.
These guards weren’t there on official business. They had no authority, and they didn’t block anyone from entering. But each self-appointed bathroom bouncer wore a paper badge that said “genital observation police” — a cheeky way of expressing opposition to legislation they said would undermine privacy and invite discrimination against transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people.
“Sometimes we are serious and we try to talk to our legislators,” said Nancy Brennan, as she stood guard outside the second-floor men’s room. “And sometimes we find a little bit of snark and humor can get the attention.”
To drive their point home, the protestors distributed small cards telling people they would need to allow a GOP lawmaker to inspect their private parts before they could use the restrooms, which are located just a few steps from each legislative chamber. Some passersby scoffed at the demonstration as immature, while others chuckled.
Brennan, who is affiliated with the Kent Street Coalition, a progressive political advocacy group in New Hampshire, said she came up with the badge idea to criticize both House Bill 148 — a Republican-backed bill that would add exceptions to the gender identity protections that currently exist in New Hampshire law — and those who support such legislation.
“A lot of these legislators are using this for points,” she said. “They don’t want to talk transgender people. They don’t want to understand where they’re coming from. They demonize them. And they demonize those of us who support them.”
While opponents of HB 148 say it will place transgender people and others at risk, proponents say they aim to protect women and girls. The legislation would identify certain situations as appropriate for classifying people on the basis of biological sex, rather than gender identity. Those situations include jails and other detention facilities; athletic or sporting events in which males are generally recognized as enjoying a physical advantage; locker rooms and multi-person bathrooms.
The legislation would allow, but not require, public and private entities statewide to separate such facilities and events by sex rather than gender.
Kamren Munz, a trans nonbinary person who has been using the men’s room for the past five years, said they have faced restroom-related discrimination, including being told to leave a facility based on perceptions of their gender, and HB 148 would make matters worse.
“It’s encouraging the general public to basically ask very invasive questions,” they said.
Munz — a former public school teacher who left the profession after drawing scrutiny from New Hampshire’s socially conservative education commissioner — was among the protesters who gathered Thursday morning at the urging of 603 Equality, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group. While Munz stood outside the second-floor women’s room, fellow demonstrators lined the halls and sang about their opposition to the legislation.
Despite the protest, HB 148 was approved in a party-line vote later Thursday by the Republicans who hold a supermajority in the 24-member New Hampshire Senate. The measure had already passed the 400-member House in March with approval from 198 Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent.
During debate, Republican Senator William M. Gannon said his support for the legislation was based partly on his daughter’s experience competing on an athletic field against a transgender opponent who was much taller and stronger than her. Gannon also said single-sex detention facilities are important for the safety of those detained.
Republican Senator Regina M. Birdsell said lawmakers need to protect privacy and the fairness of athletic competition for women and girls, who face blowback if they speak out about their discomfort when transgender people are allowed in single-sex spaces.
“Women are being marginalized in this environment,” she said, “and as far as I’m concerned, this has to stop.”
In a social media post, Republican Representative Lisa Mazur of said the badge-wearing protesters were “fighting against everything women have fought so hard for over the years.”
This legislation is very similar to a bill that Republican former governor Christopher T. Sununu vetoed last year, when he signed into law a separate bill that bars transgender girls from girls’ school sports. (The constitutionality of that sports law is being disputed in a pending federal lawsuit.)
Sununu had signed legislation in 2018 and 2019 to add gender identity to the state’s nondiscrimination law and apply those protections to school settings. He said some of the carve-outs that lawmakers wanted to add in 2024 tried “to solve problems that have not presented themselves in New Hampshire.” The legislation would invite “unnecessary discord,” he said.
It’s not yet clear whether Republican Governor Kelly A. Ayotte, who took office in January, will sign HB 148 into law.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
Local News
Investigators partnered with a nonprofit genetic genealogy analysis organization to identify the man who the remains belonged to.
After nearly four decades, a man whose skull was discovered in the New Hampshire woods has been identified.
Warren Kuchinsky was born in 1952 and was last known to be alive in the mid-1970s, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark Hall said in a statement. In 1986, his skull was found in a wooded area in the town of Bristol.
At the time, investigators weren’t able to identify whose skull it was, according to officials. Last year, however, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner partnered with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization, to solve the case using forensic genetic genealogy techniques.
Kuchinsky’s identity was confirmed through DNA testing of a surviving family member, according to officials. There is no evidence that his death was caused by foul play, according to the statement.
Founded in 2017, the DNA Doe Project partners with law enforcement, medical examiners, and volunteer genealogists to apply investigative genealogy to John and Jane Doe cases. By analyzing DNA profiles and building family trees from publicly available genetic databases and historical records, the organization has helped solve more than 250 cases nationwide.
“We are honored to have partnered with the State of New Hampshire on this case,” DNA Doe Project Team Leader Lisa Ivany said in the statement. “Through the power of investigative genetic genealogy and the dedication of our volunteer genealogists, we were able to develop a critical lead in less than 24 hours. We truly hope that this identification brings long-awaited answers to Mr. Kuchinsky’s family.”
Initial DNA testing turned up only distant matches, so the DNA Doe Project selected the case to be worked on at a virtual retreat in May 2025, according to the organization’s case profile. Over the course of a weekend, more than 40 genealogists from the U.S., Canada, England, and Scotland collaborated virtually to work on the case.
Within hours, the team discovered that the unidentified man had roots in New Hampshire and Quebec, according to the profile. They later zeroed in on Kuchinsky, who had attended school in Plymouth, N.H., but had no official proof of life past 1970.
“This identification reflects the power of partnership and scientific advancement,” Formella said in the statement. “The dedication of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the investigative support of the New Hampshire State Police, and the extraordinary work of the DNA Doe Project have restored a name to an individual who had been unidentified for nearly 40 years. We are grateful for their professionalism and commitment.”
New Hampshire
New Hampshire House Advances One of The Nation’s Most Extreme Transgender Bathroom Bans
The proposal would fine transgender people up to $5,000 for using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.
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Bathroom bans targeting transgender people have been spreading rapidly across the United States. In previous years, adult bathroom bans in public buildings were limited to a handful of states with extreme laws. This year, they have become one of the primary vehicles for anti-trans legislation nationwide. Kansas was the first to act, passing a bathroom bounty hunter system and invalidating transgender people’s IDs. Idaho and Missouri began advancing their own bills. Now, the New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed its own version — one of the most extreme in the United States, which states that a trans person using the bathroom of their gender identity is a crime under the state civil rights act, violations of which carries hefty penalties. The bill passed 181-164 on Wednesday night, just weeks after Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed a separate bathroom ban. Republicans are now sending her something far more aggressive — raising the question of whether they are trying to move the goalposts or simply daring her to veto again.
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, with the exception of RSA 21:3, RSA 21:54, and paragraph II below, all multi-user facilities, including bathrooms, restrooms, and locker rooms located in buildings owned, leased, or operated by any municipality shall be used based on the individual’s biological sex,” reads the new bill. This prohibition is expansive: it applies to parks, rest stops, airports, civic buildings, and more, and could leave transgender people struggling to find a public place to use the restroom across the state.
The bill contains a novel enforcement mechanism not seen in any other state. It declares that a transgender person “asserting” that their gender identity allows them to use the bathroom is against the law under the state civil rights act, turning civil rights protections that were meant to be protective of transgender people into a weapon against them. “It shall be unlawful for any person to assert that their gender identity is a sex other than that defined in RSA 21:3 for the purposes of accessing places or services restricted on the basis of sex,” reads the bill. Such violations could result in fines of up to $5,000 per incident and even jail time if a person violates a resulting court injunction by continuing to use the restroom.
The bill also contains provisions for private businesses. It permits any owner or operator of a “place of public accommodation” — a category that under New Hampshire law includes hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, bars, and concert venues — to restrict bathrooms by assigned sex at birth. The bill then immunizes those businesses from discrimination claims: “Adoption or enforcement of a policy pursuant to this section shall not be deemed discrimination under RSA 354-A or any other state law,” it reads.
A separate bill, HB 1217, also passed on Wednesday. That bill permits governmental buildings and businesses to classify bathrooms and locker rooms by assigned sex at birth — similar to the bathroom bans Ayotte has already vetoed. It passed by an even wider margin, 187-163. It contains no enforcement mechanism, but rather, states that bathroom bans and sports bans are not discriminatory towards transgender people under New Hampshire law.
The bills are part of a larger movement towards bathroom bans for transgender people. Just last month, Kansas passed a bathroom ban that allows every citizen in the state to become a bounty hunter, where reporting transgender people in bathrooms can net them $1,000 per trans person caught. This law also invalidated trans people’s drivers licenses in the state. Meanwhile, Idaho and Missouri are both advancing extreme anti-trans bathroom bans of their own, with Idaho’s ban even applying to private businesses, making it against the law for a private business to allow a trans person to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.
The bills are substantially more extreme than the one vetoed by Governor Ayotte just weeks ago. In a veto statement of a bathroom ban last month, Ayotte stated, “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… 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.”
It remains unclear why Republicans are pushing an even more extreme version of a bill their own governor has already vetoed three times. The bill still needs to pass the New Hampshire Senate and be signed by Ayotte to become law. One possibility is that the more extreme HB 1442 is designed as cover for HB 1217 — making that bill appear moderate by comparison and improving its chances of earning a signature. Another is that Republicans believe they can pressure Ayotte into signing, or are simply laying the groundwork for an override attempt down the line. Regardless, HB 1442 is one of the most extreme bathroom bans moving through any state legislature in the country, and transgender people across New England will be watching closely as it advances to the Senate.
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