Some Republicans walk out during ‘bathroom’ bill testimony as lawmakers fail to overturn any of Ayotte’s vetos

A group of Republican representatives walked out of the House chamber Wednesday as a Democratic representative read the names of transgender people who had died by suicide or targeted violence in 2025.

The scene, which played out as representatives reconsidered House bills that Gov. Kelly Ayotte had vetoed, capped a year in which the politics of transgender policies loomed large in the State House.

As first-term Rep. Alice Wade of Dover testified against a bill that would have allowed organizations to bar transgender people from using the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity, Republican representatives first attempted to stop her from continuing, but were blocked by Deputy Speaker Steven Smith.

About two dozen Republicans walked out after a vote passed by a wide margin that allowed Wade, who is transgender, to continue.

Wade wasn’t surprised by the effort to stop her from reading the individuals’ names, but she said it felt “incredibly disrespectful” to those who had died.

“The fact that they didn’t want to hear the people who have been affected by these targeted attacks just kind of proved to me that those deaths were preventable in a kinder world — in a world that didn’t decide that being transgender was something to be shunned,” she said in an interview.

The walk-out mirrored a similar one by the opposing party regarding the same bill in March, when Democrats streamed out of Representatives Hall as Peterborough Rep. Jonah Wheeler bucked his party and expressed support for the proposed law.

As the Democratic Party has grappled with gender politics this year, the positions of Wheeler and Wade, both Democratic representatives in their 20s, demonstrate the strident division that remains on the issue — both within the Democratic Party, but more so at large.

“Trans people are being weaponized as political scapegoats,” Wade said. “We’re being blamed for things far outside of our control. It’s classic fear-mongering.”

Wheeler and the Republican caucus had supported the bill because they believed it would protect women.

“I’ve heard from parents, grandparents, and numerous others who are concerned about the psychological and physical safety of their daughters, their granddaughters, and their wives,” Republican Rep. Jim Kofalt of Wilton said. “I have heard from school board members who feel that they are paralyzed by the current law — afraid to confront bullying and harassment in their schools out of fear that they will be faced with activist lawsuits.”

In vetoing the so-called “bathroom” bill over the summer, Gov. Ayotte expressed concerns about its scope and “unintended impacts,” including potential litigation. After the bill received nearly unanimous support from her party, her opposition to it and other Republican-backed bills suggested that she was taking a moderating approach to legislating in her first year as governor, despite the Republican trifecta in state politics.

On Wednesday, the bill failed to approach the two-thirds threshold required to overturn the veto, garnering 53.3% of the vote.

Besides the walkout and a 20-minute emergency preparedness drill, the last legislative session of the year was largely a procedural affair. The representatives failed to surpass the two-thirds threshold on any of the 11 bills Ayotte had vetoed, most of which involved education in some way.

Lawmakers voted on bills that would have required schools to establish a centralized process for the review of potentially objectionable materials and to show a gestational development video. They also failed to overturn vetoes on bills that would have removed the busing requirement for half-day kindergarteners and changed the parental notification requirements for in-school surveys.

The state’s educators’ unions and liberal advocacy organizations celebrated some of the votes.

“Granite Staters have sent a clear message to elected officials: decisions about curriculum and classrooms belong in local schools, not in the State House,” Megan Tuttle, the president of New Hampshire’s chapter of the National Education Association, said in a statement.

The celebrations may be short-lived. Many of the topics at issue on Wednesday will be the subject of new proposed legislation next year.

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