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Under the legislation, trans students would be banned from nearly all single-sex facilities that are aligned with their gender identities.
The Utah legislature has passed a bill banning transgender students from using housing, changing, and other facilities aligned with their gender identity at institutions granting degrees in the state.
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House Bill 269, officially entitled “Privacy Protections in Sex-designated Areas,” passed on Monday by a vote of 59 to 14. The bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 22 to 7 last week. The bill now goes to Gov. Spencer Cox for his signature or veto.
“We’ve had parents that are concerned and we’ve been very focused last year on making sure we have safe spaces for women,” Cox told the Utah News Dispatch prior to the bill’s passage. “That’s really important. We want to make sure that continues.”
Under the proposed law, trans students would be denied the use of bathrooms, sleeping and changing rooms, and other sex-designated facilities aligned with their gender identities. Instead, trans students would be forced to use facilities aligned with their sex assigned at birth or co-ed facilities designated for use by a single student.
Critics lambasted the bill as draconian and discriminatory, while at least one supporter used the debate to insult the trans community.
“If you don’t fit in, then that’s your own fault,” Republican State Sen. David Hinkins, said of transgender students during an earlier heated debate in the Senate, the Associated Press reports.
“The LGBTQ community is so tired,” Utah’s only out LGBTQ+ state legislator, Democratic Rep. Sahara Hayes tearfully said on the House floor. “We are so tired of being scared every year when this body meets because we don’t know how we’re going to be targeted. It’s starting to feel inevitable.”
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“History has shown us the dangers of using the state to single out, marginalize, and discriminate against specific communities,” Brittney Nystrom, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said in an open letter to Gov. Cox asking him to veto the legislation. “In our country – and even here in Utah – Black students were segregated under the pretense of ‘protection,’ and religious minorities were refused service. HB269 resurrects this discriminatory logic, targeting trans students in the name of control. Utah will look back with shame on this series of laws that discriminate against trans people.”
The bill now awaits Cox’s expected signature.
