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Utah governor swiftly signs bill to restrict transgender bathroom access • Utah News Dispatch [1]
['Katie Mckellar', 'Kyle Dunphey', 'Jennifer Shutt', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-30
Buttoning up one of the most hotly contested bills to surface so far from the Utah Legislature, Gov. Spencer Cox has signed legislation to restrict transgender people from accessing the bathrooms and locker rooms they identify with in government-owned facilities.
The Republican governor’s signature came Tuesday, the day the bill, HB257, landed on his desk. That evening, he issued a statement consisting of a single sentence to explain his vote.
“We want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all,” Cox said.
The bill becomes law immediately, but certain provisions for enforcement don’t take effect until May 1.
Up until he signed HB257, Cox was mum on whether he’d sign or veto the bill, or let it become law without his signature. He signed it well before his deadline to decide, which would have been 9 days from Wednesday
Earlier Tuesday, Utah’s only openly gay legislator, Rep. Sahara Hayes, D-Millcreek, had a message for him: Remember your compassion for vulnerable transgender Utahns, especially kids.
“I would urge him to look back on himself from two years ago,” Hayes told Utah News Dispatch in the halls of the Utah Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. “He had some really heartfelt comments that were really getting to the root of how LGBTQ people and transgender (Utahns) feel and why they need to be protected.”
Hayes referred to Cox’s decision to veto HB11 in 2022, after lawmakers on the final night of that session passed a bill to ban transgender female students from competing on girls sports teams.
“I hope that is the self that he brings to the table when he considers whether or not to sign” this year’s transgender restrictions, Hayes said.
Before issuing his signature Tuesday evening, Cox’s office did not respond to a request for comment in response to Hayes’ remarks.
Looking back on Cox’s 2022 veto
In 2022, an emotional Cox vowed to veto HB11, saying he was “stunned” by final-hour changes to make the bill an all-out ban for transgender student athletes, rather than primarily focusing on creating a commission to determine athlete eligibility. In his veto letter, the governor took issue with the bill’s last-minute alterations, as well as lawmakers targeting just a handful of transgender kids playing sports in Utah.
“Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few,” the governor wrote in his veto letter, while also noting that a disproportionately high percentage of transgender youth report suicidality. “I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live.”
Ultimately, the Utah Legislature voted to override Cox’s veto of HB11. The bill included a trigger clause that would create a commission to determine transgender athlete eligibility to play (which was the original direction of the bill) if a court were to stay the ban. With a lawsuit currently pending, that commission, now known as the School Activity Eligibility Commission, is in place and active today.
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Hayes said she appreciated Cox for centering his comments in 2022 on “just wanting to make sure (trans) kids live,” so “I hope that’s the energy he brings” this year.
This year, Cox took a different approach to transgender issues. His statement Tuesday didn’t address transgender Utahns at all.
That’s even though in past years the governor has been an outspoken ally for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2016, when he was lieutenant governor, his tearful speech at a Salt Lake City vigil for victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (a shooting at a gay bar in Florida that left 49 dead) made national headlines.
Cox’s statement explaining his signature of HB257 matches the sentiment of the Legislature’s Republican-controlled supermajority, that the bill sponsored by Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, was focused on increasing privacy and safety for all Utahns in public privacy spaces.
In contrast to HB11, which left the governor surprised after negotiations broke down, Cox was looped in on the drafting of HB257. The governor’s office was involved in “hourly” conversations through its legislative process, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, told reporters last week.
‘People are afraid’
Hayes was among House and Senate Democrats that dressed in black last week to stand in solidarity with Utah’s “marginalized and vulnerable” communities, including LGBTQ+ people, in protest of Utah’s transgender bathroom restrictions and another bill to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools and government agencies.
Hayes, who has described herself as a queer woman and has previously publicly said she’s the partner of a transgender woman, also tearfully spoke against the trans restrictions on the House floor the week prior, saying she’s “scared for my family.”
“What kind of life am I asking my loved ones to lead if they cannot go to the bathroom safely in public?” Hayes said on the House floor.
Hayes said Tuesday as a cisgender woman she can’t speak for all of Utah’s LGBTQ+ and transgender communities, “but the sentiment I’ve heard consistently” is that Utah lawmakers’ focus on transgender legislation has been “difficult” and “scary.”
“People are afraid,” she said.
Hayes pointed to a recent Salt Lake Tribune report about an angry father recently accusing a high school basketball player of being transgender.
“I think that sort of vigilante behavior is going to continue and be stoked by this, whether or not that’s in the language of the bill.”
‘We have to protect women’s spaces’
Up until his signature Tuesday, the governor did not respond to multiple requests for comment and did not take an official position on the bill. However, in media interviews ahead of the legislative session he indicated he didn’t want to shy away from the issue.
Cox told KSL.com earlier this month that while he hadn’t yet reviewed the bill, he is concerned with protecting “women’s spaces” while also treating LGBTQ+ people “with dignity.”
“What I can say generally is this is a concern for people in our state, is we have to protect women’s spaces. That’s very important to me,” Cox told the outlet, adding that he believes it’s an “important” discussion that’s happening across the U.S.
“I have no problem with that at all. But I hope we will do it in a respectful way, in a way that treats people with dignity, and that we can find the best solution with a very, very difficult issue,” Cox said.
The debate over HB257
HB257’s opponents, including Democrats and LGBTQ+ advocates, have opposed the bill as one that would segregate many transgender individuals from public spaces and force them to use facilities that don’t align with their gender identities.
Meanwhile Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature lauded the bill as a “nuanced” approach to increase privacy for “all Utahns,” but especially to protect women from “biological men” in bathrooms and locker rooms.
Birkeland has argued that her bill isn’t meant to “target” transgender individuals, pointing to other measures in her bill that would codify measures based on Title IX, a 1972 federal law banning gender discrimination in school programs such as sports, meant to ensure “fair and equal access” to sports facilities and equipment for both men and women — something Birkeland has argued Utah women and girls still haven’t received despite Title IX.
The bill would define male and female in state law based on what reproductive organs an individual is born with while restricting access to government-owned bathrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms on the basis of sex.
HB257 includes no explicit penalties to punish a transgender person for simply entering a government-owned bathroom or locker room they identify with — unless there are circumstances or behavior that cause “affront or alarm.” Then they could face enhanced criminal penalties for lewdness, trespassing, unlawful loitering or voyeurism.
The bill would, however, exempt transgender people who have undergone a “primary sex characteristics surgical procedure” and legally changed their birth certificate.
HB257 also seeks to expand gender-neutral facilities by requiring state and local government entities to provide single-occupancy facilities in new buildings, and study the feasibility of retrofitting existing buildings to expand access to unisex facilities.
In its final iteration, Birkeland also included changes sought by Equality Utah, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, to make it “crystal clear” in the bill that students in K-12 public schools could not be criminally charged for entering a school bathroom that doesn’t correspond with their sex.
It’s also worth noting that HB257’s restrictions only apply to government-owned facilities and not privately owned bathrooms and locker rooms throughout the rest of the state of Utah.
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[1] Url:
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2024/01/30/gov-spencer-cox-signs-utah-transgender-bathroom-bill/
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