At the end of the legislative session in July, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed seven bills that had passed both chambers with broad support from her own party. The vetoed legislation included bills that would have made it easier to remove books from classrooms, expanded religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements and permitted the requirement of people to use bathrooms according to their sex at birth.
English professor and State Rep. Ellen Rockmore, D-Hanover, said she was “pleased” that Ayotte vetoed these bills.
“In addition to being terrible bills, they are just unworkable,” Rockmore said. “They would have created chaos.”
H.B. 148 — colloquially known as “The Bathroom Bill” — would revoke anti-discrimination protections in bathrooms and locker rooms, sports teams, prisons and jails, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. On July 15, Ayotte called the bill “overly broad and impractical to enforce” in her veto message.
A similar bill was passed through the legislature in 2024 and was vetoed by former Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H. Government professor and State Rep. Russell Muirhead, D-Hanover, said Ayotte made a similar “pragmatic compromise” on the issue to her predecessor.
“It’s an example of a non-ideological approach to accommodating and protecting transgender citizens,” Muirhead said.
Ayotte vetoed H.B. 324 also due to logistical enforcement concerns. The bill would have let parents request the removal of books deemed obscene or harmful from school curricula.
“I have concerns that [H.B. 324] envisions the possibility of extensive civil action over materials in our schools, which could open the door to unnecessary litigation from out-of-state groups,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message.
During House floor discussion of H.B. 324, one of the bill’s sponsors, State Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Carroll County, read rape scenes from novels to give examples of literature that should be removed from schools, according to Rockmore and Muirhead.
“It appalled a lot of people and was likely a violation of decorum,” Muirhead said.
Another vetoed bill, H.B. 667, would have mandated that high school sex education courses show students an animation of fetal development.
State Sen. Suzanne Prentiss, D-Lebanon, said H.B. 667 had “no benefit” because “New Hampshire is a pro-choice state.”
Muirhead said these vetoes “convey [Ayotte’s] courage.”
“Governors don’t get rewarded for vetoes,” Muirhead said. “It’s always good to take in an example of a public servant who’s governing with integrity.”
Muirhead, Prentiss and Rockmore said this legislative session was different from previous sessions, as N.H. Republicans won a much stronger majority in the House of Representatives in the 2024 election than in previous cycles. While Republicans had only a 201-197 slight majority in 2023, now the split is 218-177.
Ten Republican state representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Prentiss said the atmosphere was “stressful.”
“Towards the end of session, it was the most contentious that I’d seen [the legislature] in the five years I’d been there,” Prentiss said. “It was a very tense and disgruntled time.”
Iris WeaverBell ’28 is a news reporter. She is from Portland, Ore., and is majoring in economics and minoring in public policy.
