A guide to veto day 2025: Ayotte vs. social conservatives

In addition to the dozens of bills signed into law by Gov. Kelly Ayotte this year, she also vetoed a dozen. On Wednesday, the House will attempt to override 11 of the governor's vetoes. Here, Ayotte signs legislation in February. (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin)

When Kelly Ayotte assumed the governor’s office in January, the Republican did so with an undeniable political advantage: a state House and Senate with firm Republican majorities to back her policies.

But despite her party’s dominance, the governor’s approach to politics has at times clashed with the more socially and fiscally conservative approaches of lawmakers in her party. This week, those differences will be put to the test. 

Ayotte vetoed 12 bills in the 2025 session, bucking fellow Republicans on hot-button issues such as transgender bathroom rights and book removals in schools. On Wednesday, the House will meet to attempt to overturn Ayotte’s vetoes of 11 House bills. The Senate already met in October and voted to uphold Ayotte’s veto of Senate Bill 213, which would have expanded the prohibition on electioneering by public employees. 

With the House’s 217 Republicans making up just under 55% of the House’s current 395 sitting members, it is unlikely that any partisan bill will clear the two-thirds threshold to override a veto. But the debate on the floor could still be fierce.  

Here’s what will be debated on veto day.  

The transgender ‘bathroom bill’

One of the most fraught vetoed bills revolves around access to public spaces by transgender people.

House Bill 148 would allow businesses and organizations to separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams by biological sex at birth, exempting them from state anti-discrimination laws that protect gender identity. The bill would also enable jails, juvenile detention centers, mental health hospitals, or “like facilities” to separate people by biological sex as well.

The state’s anti-discrimination statute has prevented classification that impinges on someone’s gender identity since 2019, when then-Gov. Chris Sununu signed a law adding gender identity to the existing protections for housing, employment, and access to public spaces.

Proponents of HB 148 say it would allow businesses to make certain private spaces safer for cisgender women; critics call it a “bathroom ban” and say it harms transgender people.

In her veto message, Ayotte said supporters of the bill had brought up “important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns” regarding private spaces, but added she believed it is “overly broad” and would create an “exclusionary environment.”

Tools for school book bans

Conservative lawmakers have also attempted to allow for more book removals in schools. House Bill 324 would require school boards to adopt new procedures for how parents can challenge books and other materials they deem obscene or harmful. 

The bill would mandate the creation of a complaint process for parents to call for the removal of a book or other content that is harmful to minors. Under the bill, content deemed harmful would include depictions or descriptions of nudity or sexual activity that “lacks serious literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value for minors” and that is not appropriate to their specific age level.

Republican supporters say it would allow for easier removal of what they have called pornography in schools. Opponents labeled it a “book ban,” and said it would diminish local control; the bill would give the State Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the governor, the final say over whether the material should be removed.

In her veto message, Ayotte wrote that while she understands the concerns about age-inappropriate materials, there is already a state law that allows parents to opt their own child out of any instructional material they object to. “Therefore, I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness,” she wrote. 

The governor raised the possibility of school districts being burdened with civil litigation over the law, and of facing monetary penalties.

An easier vaccine exemption process

Ayotte also vetoed a bill that seeks to change the process for parents in New Hampshire to receive a religious exemption for vaccine mandates for their children. If the veto is overturned, House Bill 358 will allow parents to receive an exemption by simply providing a written statement that the child hasn’t been vaccinated due to a religious belief. Currently, parents have to complete a specific form.

When vetoing the bill in July, Ayotte emphasized the “important role” childhood immunizations play in “preventing the resurgence and spread of previously deadly diseases.” She wrote in her veto message: “While parents must be the final decision makers on what immunizations their child receives, the State already has an established process by which parents can claim a religious exemption, and I see no reason to change it.”

Partisan school board elections

One vetoed bill would transform local school elections. House Bill 356 would allow school districts to make their school board elections partisan, meaning candidates would be identified on the ballot by their party. The bill would create a path for voters in that school district to pass a warrant article enabling those partisan labels; that article would need a simple majority to pass. 

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Ayotte wholly opposes the idea: She wrote in her veto message that it would create “unnecessary division” among residents. “Local school board elections are run properly and in a nonpartisan manner, and there is no need to fix a system that is not broken,” she wrote.

Required fetus viewing in school

Lawmakers also passed a bill this year that mandated public school health classes show students a video of a fetus. Specifically, House Bill 667 requires those health classes to show “a high-quality computer-generated animation or ultrasound video that shows the development of the heart, brain, and other vital organs in early fetal development.”

Lawmakers, including one of the bill’s supporters, Rep. Glenn Cordelli, framed the bill as an effort to teach children about gestational science and to foster “empathy and compassion towards the pre-born children.”

In July, Ayotte, in vetoing the bill, said she doesn’t think it’s “an appropriate role for the State to be mandating such requirements.”

An end to half-day kindergarten transportation

In a bid to reduce costs to school districts, Republican lawmakers have sought to remove some transportation mandates. House Bill 319 would have exempted public school districts from the requirement to provide transportation to half-day kindergarten students, and only require that for full-day kindergarten. 

But Ayotte opposed the loosened restrictions, writing in her veto message that allowing schools to drop that transportation would “place an undue burden on working families.”

Higher hurdles for non-academic surveys

Since 1990, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey has been conducted at schools to collect anonymous information about student alcohol and drug use, mental health challenges, and sexual activity. 

But conservatives have long called for stricter parental consent requirements. House Bill 446 would require parents to opt in to non-academic surveys in public schools, changing the current law, which allows them an opt-out. According to state law, those include surveys asking students about social behavior, family life, religion, politics, sexual orientation, sexual activity, drug use, and more. 

Conservatives argue the Youth Risk Behavior Survey is invasive and inappropriate, and say parents should not be required to opt out to prevent them from being administered to children. 

But Ayotte wrote in her veto message that she had heard “tremendous concern” about the bill from mental health and substance use disorder advocates, who said the data helps them to measure the depth of certain problems, allocate funding and services toward them, and see if they improve. Ayotte wrote that if the survey were made to be opt-in and participation decreased, it would “undermine the reliability of the data collected, jeopardizing efforts to respond to the needs of vulnerable youth in our state.” 

An exception to the accessible voting machine mandate

One vetoed bill was meant to accompany a new law requiring cities and towns to provide accessible voting machines in local elections. House Bill 613 would give cities and towns a potential exemption from that law. 

The bill would allow those municipalities to post a message requesting that anyone who would like to use accessible voting machines at a local election to write in a request to that town at least 60 days before Election Day. If no letter were received by then, that town would not need to provide the accessible machines at the polls, according to the bill. 

Sponsors of the bill said it would give some flexibility to towns with very low populations in which no residents have expressed a need for assorted machines, saving them on the costs of programming those machines. But in vetoing the bill, Ayotte wrote that it “impacts people with disabilities and would conflict with federal law that requires accessible voting systems be available at all polling places during federal elections.”

Automatic elimination of empty positions

Lawmakers will also have the opportunity Wednesday to override Ayotte’s veto on House Bill 475. HB 475 would amend the default budget process for New Hampshire towns so that positions that sit vacant for a year would be eliminated from the town’s budget. 

In her veto message, Ayotte wrote that this was a threat to towns’ ability to recruit and retain first responders. She explained that the New Hampshire Association of Fire Chiefs and Association of Police Chiefs have told her the bill, “should it be signed into law, will have far-reaching effects for public safety … [and] increase the length of time for roads to be plowed, fire department coverage, police response, and staffing.”

Leftover bills

Two vetoed bills up for a vote Wednesday have become redundant since first being passed. The first, House Bill 115, would have authorized a continuing resolution in June to allow the state government to remain open while lawmakers hammered out a resolution to deep-set differences between Republican lawmakers and the governor over the budget. That bill was made irrelevant on June 26, when the House voted to approve a compromise budget by one vote, 184-183.

The second bill, House Bill 781, would require school boards to ban cell phone use in schools. Doing so was a major priority of Ayotte’s this year, but HB 781 took a different approach than Ayotte’s preferred method. Ayotte wanted a strict “bell-to-bell” ban in which phones would be banned all day, while HB 781 gave schools more opportunity for exemptions. 

In the end, the Legislature kept the governor’s stricter version in House Bill 2, the budget trailer bill; it is now law and schools have adopted the policy for this school year. If lawmakers overrode Ayotte’s veto of HB 781, the less restrictive approach would become law.