Voting along partisan lines, the N.H. Senate passed and sent to the governor a Republican-backed bill Thursday that would allow organizations to restrict bathrooms, locker rooms, jails and athletic competition by biological sex.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte has not said whether she will support House Bill 148, which is similar to one then-Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed last year. If she signs it, the bill would go into effect 60 days later.

N.H. Sen. Bill Gannon, R-Sandown, spoke in favor of the bill before the Senate Thursday, citing safety and privacy concerns and pointing to a specific soccer game in which he said his small, sophomore daughter competed against a 6-foot-1 transgender athlete.

“The compelling state interest is the safety of my daughter in this case on the sports field,” Gannon said.

“In locker rooms and bathrooms, protecting the privacy rights of women and girls is a compelling interest.”

The potential size, speed and strength of transgender women have often come up in debate on the portion of this bill dealing with athletic competition. Proponents of the measure say these qualities are a rationale for the legislation.

Opponents, meanwhile, say that argument is overdone as the stature and abilities of female athletes vary widely anyway. They also point out that there are only about five athletes statewide who identify as transgender.

Sen. Daryl Abbas, R-Salem, was among those who spoke in favor of HB 148.

“I always sympathize not for the star athlete but for the last girl that was left off the soccer team or the basketball team because a biological male took a spot on the team,” he said.

Sen. Tara Reardon, D-Concord, spoke against the bill, saying it is discriminatory.

“Regression is what we are voting on today, going back to a time when people were not free to live their lives the way they wished, where their civil liberties and freedoms were infringed on a daily basis and where they were scared every time they stepped foot out of their homes,” she said.

Reardon also pointed to a recent incident in Boston in which a security guard challenged a woman’s use of a bathroom.

“What if your daughter had a short haircut, or presented as more masculine?,” she asked. “Would you be OK if you found a security guard confronting them in a bathroom and she had to prove her gender?”

In an interview after the Senate finished its session Thursday, Sen. Donovan Fenton, D-Keene, criticized the bill.

“If my wife takes our 6-year-old son into the bathroom with her, instead of leaving him outside, is she now a criminal? Under this, presumably so.”

The Senate’s passage of HB 148 on Thursday came two days after a N.H. House committee retained, or removed from further consideration, a bill that would require public schools not to allow transgender women or girls to compete in women’s sports or allow them to enter female locker rooms.

The House Education Policy and Administration Committee sidetracked that bill after representatives noted a similar measure passed by the N.H. Legislature is being challenged in federal court. A U.S. District Court judge in Concord granted a preliminary injunction to block it pending further proceedings after finding the measure was discriminatory.

HB 148 would amend the state’s anti-discrimination statute to specify that it is not discriminatory to classify people by biological sex when it comes to bathrooms, locker rooms, jails or athletic activities “in which physical strength, speed, or endurance is generally recognized to give an advantage to biological males.”

Michael Haley, an attorney for Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders and a former member of the N.H. Attorney General’s Office, said in an interview Wednesday that although HB 148 would change state law, it would run afoul of federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex.

He added that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that discrimination on the basis of sex includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

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