Somersworth resident and newly elected School Board member Gerri Cannon enjoyed a great job in the computer industry for more than 31 years, but she still wasn’t happy.

Cannon said although she was successful in her career, she wrestled with her assigned gender at birth as a male going back to her teenage years. So at age 46, she decided to approach her superiors and share who she really was.

“I needed to share something that I had known since I was in my early teenage years that I was having trouble with my gender,” said Cannon. “The challenge at work was when I was in the process of coming out and I would travel for business and I’d be in some other part of the country, in the evening hours I would get dressed up as a female. Well, I had people within my own organization who had a problem with that.”

Cannon said over the course of the next year, she was put on “watch” at her job; with superiors keeping tabs on her to ensure she was dressed “appropriately” at work. When she was finally laid off, she had to sign a waiver agreement in order to obtain her sizable severance package to support her two kids going to college and paying the mortgage on two properties after her spouse at the time asked her to move out.

“I was handed a sheet of paper that said if I was to do that again, I would be terminated. There wasn’t a dress code for high-tech professionals but they didn’t like it,” said Cannon. “I asked a couple legal professionals whether or I’d have an opportunity to sue the company and they said there wasn’t anything definitive in place in the state, so it could be hard (to make a case).”

The workplace discrimination transgender people face is just one reason why Cannon and Freedom New Hampshire are working to include the term “gender identity” as grounds for protection under New Hampshire's anti-discrimination statute with House Bill 1319.

“We’re working to prevent discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing and public places like parks, restaurants, movie theaters and hospitals,” said Linds Jakows, campaign manager of Freedom New Hampshire. “We know it’s a new issue for a lot of people, a lot of people are still learning about what it means to be transgender, so we’ve been introducing the thousands of transgender people across the state to their neighbors and explaining why these protections are so critical.”

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 15 percent of the 225 New Hampshire respondents reported losing a job because of their gender identity during their lifetime. Seventeen percent reported forms of mistreatment at work, such as being forced to use a bathroom that did not match their gender identity, being forced to present the wrong gender to keep their employment or having a boss or coworker share private information about their transgender status with others without permission, according to the survey. Twenty-three percent reported they have experienced some form of housing discrimination in the past year.

The survey also reported 74 percent of those who were out or perceived as transgender between kindergarten and grade 12 experienced some form of mistreatment, ranging from verbal abuse to physical or sexual assault.

Alex Myers is an English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy. He was born as a girl and lived as a “tomboy” for his childhood in Paris, Maine, before coming out as gay while he attended Phillips as a student in the 1990s. He transitioned during his senior year and began living as a man in 1995. After going out to Wyoming and being fired from his job as a cook because of being transgender, Meyers worked as a forest ranger and then returned to the East Coast to finish his undergraduate degree at Harvard University. He then settled into a teaching position at the St. George’s School in Rhode Island. Meyers said he soon faced backlash from parents who were apprehensive about having a transgender person teach at the school.

“The headmaster called me in, I did my research. Rhode Island is a state that protected against discrimination based on gender identity, so I knew he couldn’t fire me and I knew he couldn’t transfer me out of working with kids into a sort of ‘non-contact’ position,” Myers said. “He went over with me all the things these people said, which was basically they didn’t like transgender people, that transgender people made them uncomfortable. At the end of it he said, ‘We have a lot of work to do with our parents,’ but I only felt empowered to go into that meeting because of that protection.”

The non-discrimination legislation, under a different bill number, was taken up in the New Hampshire Legislature in 2017, and it was tabled until the upcoming session. Jakows said with 15 sponsoring legislators from both sides of the aisle, the 2018 version of the bill has a greater chance of passing this session. It would make New Hampshire the final New England state to enact such protections. Jakows said the House Judiciary Committee will host hearings on the bill sometime between mid-January and the end of February.

However, Republican Speaker of the House Rep. Gene Chandler of Bartlett was non-committal about his position on the bill and predicted a “close, contentious vote.” He said he didn't support previous similar legislation.

“The question is not the issue of protections for transgender people,” Chandler said. “It’s a question of what other people will use the law as a way for child molesters, for instance, to get around certain things. This isn’t my concern, just what other people have brought to my attention.”

Deputy Speaker Rep. Sherman Packard, a Republican, said he would not support the bill because he believes the language in the bill would allow for certain people to take advantage of the protections and inappropriately use public bathrooms.

“I’m against the concept of an individual using a bathroom of the opposite sex when you have people who wake up one day and say, ‘Today I feel like being a woman or visa-versa,’” Packard said. “I’m not discriminating, but we need realistic barriers to stop individuals who wake up on any given day and declare what they want to be.”

Cornerstone Action, a conservative advocacy group, led a drive to oppose the New Hampshire bill in 2017 with a petition and email campaign that sought to pressure state legislators. Cornerstone labeled the legislation the "Bathroom Bill" and claimed it could jeopardize the safety of women and girls in public bathrooms by allowing men with bad intent to claim to be women and go into women's bathrooms.

Freedom New Hampshire anticipates similar opposition this year and has prepared a "myth busters" document explaining why the bill's supporters feel those fears are unfounded, noting the bill is supported by the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police and the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. Dover Police Chief Anthony Colarusso is among those who spoke in favor of the bill last year, saying at the time, "In places where legal protections are in place, rates of violence against transgender individuals go down with no uptick in public safety incidents."

Attempting to label legislative attempts to add transgender protections as "bathroom bills" have become infamous nationally, notably in North Carolina. That state last year repealed portions of its bill, including a requirement that transgender people use the bathroom that matches their birth certificate. This decision came after the NCAA and NBA showed support for transgender people and threatened to pull major sporting events from the state.

According to Jakows, the bathroom concern does not hold water because transgender individuals are more at risk of harassment or violence if they were forced to go into a public restroom that matches their gender from birth.

“We all care about safety and privacy in bathrooms, including people who are transgender," she said. "Everyone needs to use the bathroom, most people go in and out and mind their own business. This bill has already been on the books in 18 states and 200 other cities and there hasn’t been any uptick in safety incidents.”

Benjamin Vihstadt, communications director for Gov. Chris Sununu, said the governor, “looks forward to working with the newly formed Governor’s Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion on reviewing HB 1319 and New Hampshire’s anti-discrimination statutes.”

“Gov. Sununu believes that discrimination, in any form, is unacceptable and runs contrary to New Hampshire’s Live Free or Die spirit,” Vihstadt said.

Cannon said transgender people are careful about where they travel for business and leisure. She doesn't want New Hampshire to be viewed as unwelcoming or even hostile because it doesn't offer civil rights protections for people who are transgender.

“A lot of my friends who are transgender who travel for vacation times, they double check to see which states are friendly and which ones don’t have the laws to protect them," Cannon said. "If they’re going to come to a state they want to make sure they’re well treated and well cared for and they don’t have to worry about who they are. I have a number of friends who avoid New Hampshire; they’ll come to New England, they’ll come to Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut but they’ll avoid New Hampshire.”