Posts Tagged As: New Hampshire

Twelve States File Brief Supporting Transgender Coverage Under Civil Rights Laws

Jim Burroway

July 28th, 2016

Notes: In states other than Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee, local jurisdictions may provide additional anti-discrimination protections beyond those provided by state law. On June 30, a federal judge issued an injunction preventing Mississippi’s so-called “religious freedom” law from going into effect.

Notes: In states other than Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee, local jurisdictions may provide additional anti-discrimination protections beyond those provided by state law. On June 30, a federal judge issued an injunction preventing Mississippi’s so-called “religious freedom” law from going into effect. (Click to enlarge.)

Twelve states, led by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, have filed a brief in federal court supporting the Obama Administration’s policies to include non-discrimination protections for transgender students and employees under current civil rights laws which prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. The brief was filed in the Northern District of Texas, where Texas is the lead plaintiff on behalf of thirteen states in a lawsuit seeking to block the Obama Administration’s policies.

According to Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed:

“The bottom line is that the federal guidance at issue here threatens no imminent harm,” reads a draft of the brief provided to BuzzFeed News.

The filing is led by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, whose brief adds that federal protections for transgender people are “strongly in the public interest.”

Ferguson elaborated on getting involved in the litigation in an interview with BuzzFeed News, explaining, “I think this case could go all the way to the Supreme Court, and I want to make sure the trial court has our perspective and the perspective of like-minded states.”

I haven’t seen a copy of the brief. Buzzfeed reports that the brief argues, “Contrary to Plaintiffs’ claims, our shared experience demonstrates that protecting the civil rights of our transgender friends, relatives, classmates, and colleagues creates no public safety threat and imposes no meaningful financial burden.”

States joining Washington’s brief are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, as well as Washington, DC. All but New Hampshire and New York cover gender identity in addition to sexual orientation under their non-discrimination laws. New York has recently extended gender identity protections under regulations implemented by the state’s Division of Human Rights, which enforces the state’s non-discrimination laws.

(Click to enlarge.)

(Click to enlarge.)

Twelve other states have joined Texas in its federal lawsuit, and nine others have joined a a similar lawsuit being led by Nebraska. Two lawsuits in North Carolina seek to enjoin the Obama Administration from implementing its transgender protection policies.

Two others lawsuits have been lodged against North Carolina over HB2, which prohibits municipalities from enacting local non-discrimination ordinances based on either sexual orientation or gender identity, and which requires transgender people to use the rest room based on the gender listed on their birth certificates.

On Tuesdsay, Federal District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder set a November 14 trial date to consider whether the four North Carolina lawsuits should be tried jointly or organized in a different manner. But moments ago, the ACLU, which joined with Lambda Legal to represent plaintiffs in one of those lawsuits challenging HB2 has sent out a press release saying that Judge Schroeder will hear arguments on Monday, August 1, on a motion for a preliminary injunction blocking the state from enforcing its anti-transgender provisions.

New Hampshire Senate Approves Conversion Therapy Ban

Jim Burroway

May 20th, 2016

New-Hampshire-State-House-5-JPGLate last night, New Hampshire’s Senate joined the House in approving a bill to ban sexual orientation change therapy for those under the age of eighteen. The bill passed in a voice vote, with Republican Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley’s support.

The Senate had been expected to approve House Bill 1661 during the afternoon, but was stymied by several unsuccessful attempts to add exemptions for religious counseling and a religious exemption for parents. The bill does include language designed to exempt clergy. In the end, the Senate did agreed to an amendment that penalized licensed therapists who performed or advertised conversion therapy. Six Republicans joined all 10 Democrats to support that amendment. Earlier versions of the bill contained no penalties, which would have, in effect, allowed the practice to continue. Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) praised the bill’s passage and will sign it into law.

Other states with sexual orientation therapy bans are California, New Jersey, Oregon, and Illinois, as well as the District of Columbia.

New Hampshire Elects First Openly Transgender Legislator

Jim Burroway

November 8th, 2012

The historic LGBT gains from Tuesday’s watershed election keep coming at the state level. Many of those, unfortunately, have gone unnoticed but they are nevertheless worth noting. Particularly in New Hampshire, where Stacie Laughton won one of three seats in the state House of Representatives for Ward 4. She earned 1,588 votes, easily beating two Republican candidates for the third seat:

“I believe that at this point, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community will hopefully be inspired,” Laughton said Wednesday. “My hope is that now maybe we’ll see more people in the community running, maybe for alderman. Maybe in the next election, we’ll have a senator.”

This is significant because usually when we talk about “LGBT,” transgender advocates complain, with considerable justification, about the “silent T.” More electoral victories like this can go a long way toward changing that.

I’d like to pivot to other LGBT races, but I haven’t been able to track our victories at the state or local level. I do know that in Colorado, the Democrats have taken control of the state’s House of Representatives, which means that openly gay Rep. Mark Ferrandino (D-Denver) is poised to become the chamber’s next speaker, which bodes well for another try at civil unions. Florida now has at least two openly gay legislators that I know of. I’m sure there are many more. I’d appreciate it if you can fill in some of the blanks in the comments below.

The Impossible Happened In New Hampshire, Ctd.

Jim Burroway

March 22nd, 2012

Building on Timothy’s post yesterday, the New Hampshire General Court’s website has been updated with the roll callon a vote on the proposed marriage repeal vote. A “yea” vote was to agree that the bill was “inexpedient to legislate,” thus killing the bill. The vote tally was:

  Yea Nay Not Voting
Republicans: 119 115 59
Democrats: 92 1 11
TOTAL: 211 116 70

More Republicans turned out to vote for preserving marriage equality than showed up to vote against. Another one in five Republicans found reasons not to show up that day. This is a very far cry from where the Republican Party is nationwide, but turning points always start somewhere. It’s fitting that this one should come in the “Live Free or Die” state.

The impossible happened in New Hampshire

Timothy Kincaid

March 21st, 2012

The New Hampshire legislature has a Republican majority. Not just any majority, but a super-majority – the number necessary to override any veto by the Democratic Governor, John Lynche.

Today the House of Representatives did the unexpected. They voted NOT to reverse marriage equality. By a vote of 202 to 133 211 to 116.

We have been hoping (and more recently believing) that there would be enough Republicans voting “no” to sustain a veto of the bill. I certainly did not expect that enough Republicans would oppose the bill so as to not have it pass. And I never dreamed of a loss with a margin like this one.

I don’t yet know who was present and who was missing, but at most only 45% 40% of the House’s Republican caucus (and I don’t think any Democrats) showed up and voted to repeal marriage equality.

This is indeed a very important day.

NH is voting on marriage reversal

Timothy Kincaid

March 21st, 2012

Unfortunately, I am not receiving the feed in a way that makes any intelligible understanding of the process possible. Adding to the difficulty, the New Hampshire legislature seems to vote on amendment numbers and on items on “page 246” which is fine for those voting but gives little information to us out here in the blogosphere.

So I cannot give any form of liveblog. Nor have i found anyone doing so.

NOM’s mininalist definition of victory

Timothy Kincaid

March 21st, 2012

CNN’s Thomas Roberts (who is gay) interviewed Brian Brown, the National Organization for Marriage’s President, and Craig Stowell, the Republican co-chair of Stand Up for New Hampshire Families (our side), about the expected vote today in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

Brown gave his usual posturing and nonsense.

(Segue alert: don’t you get tired of talking heads saying the same nonsense over and over regardless of the situation? I laughed out loud this week when Brooke on Dancing With the Has-Beens asked Martina Navratalova about her scores. Instead of the standard “we are really pleased, we went out and gave it our best and had a lot of fun, so we hope America votes for us” that every other contestant said, Navratalova said, “oh, it was the same score we got in rehearsals so I guess it is what it is.” Back to the topic.)

He laughably ranted about “special interest groups from out of state” (leaving the New Hampshirite the opportunity to point out that Brian isn’t a local boy) and claimed that 119 legislators were “booted out because they took it upon themselves to redefine marriage” (a notion scoffed at by the Republican leaders who ignored the issue for a year and a half because “we were elected to address the economy”).

But here’s the sentence you need to pay attention to.

“We’re looking forward to the vote today. I expect we’re going to have a majority here. I think it’s going to be historic to have a state vote and have a majority vote say, “this was wrong, we made a tragic mistake two years ago and we’re going to right that wrong” and I expect that we’re going to see a victory today.”

NOM’s definition of success is “a majority”. And, mind you, this for a bill that would simply revert to full civil union protections.

In terms of actual impact, if NOM eeks out “a majority”, we win. Governor Lynch will veto the bill (assuming it survives the Senate) and NOM will scramble to try and find enough votes to overturn the veto.

Keep in mind that Republicans have a veto-proof majority. If this is a party-line vote, then marriage equality would be reversed in that state. But Brown has conceded that NOM isn’t expecting a veto-proof majority. They aren’t expecting to win, they are just laying the framework to argue that a vote in which they lose all Democrats and a large number of Republicans and which will never become law is “historic”.

The vote has not yet happened. And in politics anything can happen. But NOM’s admission suggests that the vote today will be good news.

I can feel pity for Brian Brown. Surely it cuts at one’s sense of being to constantly spin and lie and pretend. When one goes into quiet contemplation, surely “winning” seems little consolation for giving up your integrity, and when you aren’t winning it must seem like an unfair trade. If you sell your soul, shouldn’t you at least get something for it?

As Thomas asked him,

Brian… what the National Organization of Marriage does to try and stand against the tide of equality, isn’t it exhausting?

New Hampshire GOP Tries Different Tack On Marriage Repeal

Jim Burroway

March 19th, 2012

New Hampshire’s legislature is solidly in Republican hands with sufficient majorities to deliver veto-proof legislation to Democratic Gov. John Lynch. While many in the chamber want to repeal the marriage equality law which Gov. Lynch signed in 2009, it is believed that, so far, there have not been enough votes in the legislature to override an expected veto, leading repeal backers to try a different approach. Last week, Rep. David Bates, the sponsor of the repeal bill, proposed adding a new convoluted and confusing clause which would put before the voters in November this question:

Shall New Hampshire law allow civil unions for same-sex couples and define marriage as the union of one man and one woman?”

The question sets up a perfect trap: A yes vote bans same-sex marriage, but a no vote would … do what? It wouldn’t return same-sex marriage back into law, and may instead be used as justification for rescinding civil unions. Or it may do nothing no matter how New Hampshire residents vote, since the proposed referendum would be non-binding. But even as a non-binding referendum, it would still mean that LGBT people would still have to justify their families before New Hampshire voters.

A vote on the proposed bill is expected on Wednesday.

An encouraging sign from New Hampshire

Timothy Kincaid

March 13th, 2012

It is clear that New Hampshire Rep. Bob Bates would ban recognition for same sex couples entirely if he were to have his way. It is becoming increasingly clear that Bates is realizing that he may not get anything.

When Republicans won veto-proof majorities in both state houses, conventional wisdom assumed that they would reverse the state’s marriage law.

And bates was quick with a bill that would not only ban equality but make a mockery of civil unions. (AP)

Bates’ first amendment to the repeal bill would have allowed civil unions for any two adults and would have let anyone refuse to recognize the unions. It also would have allowed anyone to discriminate against such couples in employment, housing and public accommodations based on religious or moral beliefs.

But with a populace that has accepted – and now supports – the marriage law and with party leadership more interested in fiscal issues, the likelihood of that threat has diminished. Now it seems promising that enough Republicans will vote to retain the law so that Democratic Governor John Lynch’s promised veto will hold.

And Bates is beginning to sound a little desperate.

His latest proposal is to revert to civil unions for same sex couples but not siblings or bowling buddies, but to put it to the people in November in a non-binding resolution. While he says that this would give the legislature time to reverse itself if marriage has public support, it is obvious that his hope is that he could marshal enough Republicans to ignore the people’s position. (It is politically easier to block the passage offerings equality than it is to reverse it – even against popular opinion).

While watching weather vanes is not a very exact political indicator, this sounds like good news to me.

NH Marriage Foes’ Push Is On

Jim Burroway

February 28th, 2012

Marriage opponents in New Hampshire are pushing to repeal that state’s law providing marriage equality. The only question is whether Republicans, which control veto-proof majorities in both houses, can actually muster enough votes to override a promised veto from Gov. John Lynch (D). The New York Times tells us what marriage opponents are up to:

A House vote would need to take place by March 29, the deadline for the House to send its legislation to the Senate. Mr. Bates said Monday that he was working on ways to broaden the bill’s support in both chambers, like changing or removing a sentence that states, “Children can only be conceived naturally through copulation by heterosexual couples.”

NH Repubs have an excuse

Timothy Kincaid

February 7th, 2012

There has been speculation (including my own) that New Hampshire Republicans don’t want to stir a hornets nest and reverse a marriage law that has been accepted and is now supported by a strong majority of New Hampshire residents. So far, they have avoided the issue by being far too occupied with advancing legislation that they believe will help their economy.

But now the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals may have given them an ideal excuse. They can now say that while they had no obligation to advance marriage equality, now that the state has done so taking it away is an impermissible violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. So until that has been addressed by the Supreme Court, they’d best not reverse the law.

If, as I am guessing, they are looking for an excuse. And I rather suspect that our allies in the Democratic Party have already mentioned it.

OMG: New Hampshire Republicans may not vote to repeal marriage!!

Timothy Kincaid

February 2nd, 2012

Yesterday was supposed to be the day that the New Hampshire legislature voted to repeal marriage equality. And all day I kept trying to find out what was going on, only to be met with silence. Now I know why. According to the Boston Globe, the New Hampshire House Republicans have issued a statement listing their 2012 agenda, and repealing marriage equality is not on it.

Okay, I knew it was a possibility. And I’m not totally shocked. But I really didn’t dare hope – and I’m still not willing to read too much into this announcement:

Republican House Leader Rep. D.J. Bettencourt of Salem said Thursday the House was focusing on economic and education reforms that would bring job creators to New Hampshire and put citizens back to work.

Hot-button social issues like gun rights, immigration and labor reform were all absent from the agenda, but the biggest hole was left by gay marriage, which is the target of several bills aiming to repeal it.

After hours of meetings and talking with the caucus, they determined that this wasn’t a priority.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, February 1

Jim Burroway

February 1st, 2012

TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Hampshire Legislature May Vote On Marriage Repeal: Concord, NH. Word has it that the New Hampshire legislature may bring a bill to repeal marriage equality up for a vote today. While Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both houses, it’s unclear whether they will have the votes to override Gov. John Lynch’s (D) promised veto. A number of Republicans have come out against repealing marriage equality, while others are keeping mum simply because they want the whole issue to go away. As one former Republican House speaker explained, “It’s kind of one of those issues we’re going to have to deal with but wish we didn’t have to, in my opinion.” Marriage equality has been the law of the land since January 1, 2010.

Washington Senate to Vote On Marriage Equality: Olympia, WA. At the other end of the country from New Hampshire, the Washington state Senate is expected to vote on marriage equality later this afternoon or early evening. Twenty-five Senators, including two Republicans, have pledged their support for the proposal, providing the minimum needed for passage in that chamber. A similar bill is awaiting committee action in the House.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Langston Hughes: 1902.  He was one of the innovators of a new form of poetry: jazz poetry. And it’s his poetry that he is best known for. Born in Joplin, Missouri, he moved to New York City to attend Columbia, but was more interested in the goings-on in Harlem. He traveled throughout the world, and while his writings reflect those travels, he remained rooted in the experience of the Harlem Renaissance. His 1934 collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks, tells of the intersection of black and white, and his screen play for Way Down South came out in the same year as Gone With the Wind. He remained closeted for his entire life, although some say that if you ignore the pronouns you can see hints of homoeroticism in some of his poems. Other unpublished poems appear to have been written to a black male lover. Another short story, Blessed Assurance,” deals with a father’s anger over his son’s “queerness.” But his finances were always precarious, and he would not have been able to afford the fallout of openness about his sexuality. He died in 1967 after abdominal surgery, and his ashes are interred at the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

NOM: New Hampshire To Vote On Marriage Equality Repeal Wednesday

Jim Burroway

January 30th, 2012

NOM has the details on their blog:

I’ve got exciting news! We’ve been told that HB437—a bill to repeal same-sex marriage—will be voted on Next Wednesday, February 1st! Now is the time to call your legislators—especially House members—right away and ask them to VOTE YES ON HB 437! [Emphasis — and exclamation points! —  in the original]

If you’re a New Hampshire resident of voter, NOM helpfully provides easy links so you can call your legislator:

NH Marriage Repeal Vote Delayed

Jim Burroway

January 18th, 2012

There are reports out that Republican leaders in the New Hampshire House has delayed the vote to repeal the state’s marriage equality law. The vote has been postponed until February, according to House Majority leader D.J. Bettencourt. Many in the House expected the vote to occur today even though the issue was not on the House calendar. Democratic Gov. John Lynch vowed to veto the repeal if it reached his desk. The delay is seen as a sign that the House does not have a veto-proof majority to pass the legislation.

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