Spencer Cox, Governor of Utah, responds to questions during the 2034 SLC Press Conference ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 24, 2024 in Paris, France.
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Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law Friday legislation that would prohibit transgender students at public colleges and universities from living in dorms that fit their gender identity.
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It's the third time in recent years that Utah has restricted transgender rights, the Salt Lake Tribune notes.
Cox did not provide comment after signing the bill. It requires trans students to be assigned a room based on their gender assigned at birth or in an area that is gender neutral.
The governor in 2022 vetoed an anti-trans bill that banned trans girls from participating on school sports teams. He wrote in a letter at the time, "Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few."
The state legislature overrode Cox's veto.
However, as the Tribune reports, Cox has shifted to the right on trans issues, supporting a 2023 ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth and a 2024 anti-transgender bathroom ban barring trans people from using government-owned restrooms and locker rooms that fit their gender identity.
In a letter by the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah sent to Cox before he signed the bill, the organization's executive director Brittney Nystrom wrote that the bill would "sets a troubling precedent for government overreach into personal decisions."
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"[The bill] relegates transgender students to gender-neutral or single-occupant dormitories, yet these options do not exist at all public colleges and universities in Utah. As a result, students may be excluded from campus housing entirely pending the completion of the Utah System of Higher Education’s rulemaking process to expand access in these facilities. Even if such housing were available statewide, this legislation risks creating a separate, unequal, and stigmatizing system that isolates rather than includes," Nystrom wrote. "When those in power single out and attack a particular group, it erodes the rights of everyone and fuels hostility that extends beyond the laws themselves."
Other bills up for votes in Utah's state legislature include a ban on Pride flags in classrooms and another that would okay misgendering by public officials.
The recently signed bill, H.B. 269, came after a cisgender woman, Avery Saltzman, disputed sharing a dorm room with a 20-year-old trans woman, Marcie Robertson at Utah State University. Saltzman's mother posted about it on social media even though the situation was resolved, where it was taken up by the right.
“My life has been excruciating since this began to unfold,” Robertson said at a hearing last month on the bill, according to the Tribune.
Robertson's mother, McKinsey Robertson, also spoke at the hearing.
“Being afraid of someone different from yourself is no reason to bully them," she said.
The paper notes that the bill was signed a decade after Utah banned discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community in housing and employment. The law takes effect on June 1.
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