SALT LAKE CITY — A bill that passed its final step in the legislature on Monday says that transgender college students in Utah will not be able to live in dorms that match their gender identity.
A heated debate in the Senate led to the bill being passed again by the state House with some small changes. During the debate, a Republican told trans people, “If you don’t fit in, then that’s your own fault.”
It is now on the desk of Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who has said he supports the limits. The bill passed with large enough majorities in both houses that the governor cannot reject it, according to spokesman Robert Carroll.
The bill says that students at the state’s public colleges and universities can only go into or live in a gendered place that matches their assigned sex at birth. This could be a dorm building, locker room, or bathroom. Transgender students can live in dorms with other students, but only in single rooms.
The bill goes further than the rules in Utah and 11 other states that don’t let transgender girls and women use the bathrooms for women in public schools and sometimes other government buildings. This would be the first law specifically targeting university housing for transgender people. However, some states have broad rules that could be interpreted to cover dorms.
States with bathroom rules are Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. Ohio’s will start on February 25. The law has been put on hold in Idaho by a judge.
A mother’s social media post that became popular criticized a Utah university for not telling her ahead of time that her daughter would have a transgender roommate. As a result, Republican lawmakers promised to look into campus housing.
Transgender woman Marcie Robertson, a junior at Utah State University, was put in charge of a women’s dorm and given a suite to share with freshman Avery Saltzman. When Saltzman found out who Robertson was, she asked for and got a room move, and then her mom wrote about it online.
A few weeks ago, Robertson told lawmakers in a committee meeting that life has been “excruciating” since the online attention led to death threats and harassment. But she said it hurt the most to see laws that are directly aimed at her.
It made Saltzman uncomfortable that present rules let a trans woman stay in her dorm, as she explained in court. She said that female students must decide if they want to “put themselves at risk” or be judged for not wanting to live with a trans person.
Rep. Stephanie Gricius of Eagle Mountain, a Republican, pushed for the bill and said it was necessary to protect the privacy of female children.
Rep. Sahara Hayes, a Democrat from Millcreek and Utah’s only openly LGBTQ+ politician, said Robertson’s privacy has been invaded more than anyone else’s.
The Republican supermajority has pushed laws aimed at Utah’s small transgender community for four years in a row, she said.
Utah did not allow transgender girls to play girls’ school sports in 2022. The judge has briefly stopped the ban from going into effect and set a trial date for this spring. The state banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender teens and young adults in 2023. And Cox signed the bathroom rule into law last year.
Hayes said on the House floor through tears, “The LGBTQ community is so tired.” “We are so sick of being scared every time this body gets together because we don’t know how we’ll be blamed.” It seems like it will happen eventually.
In the Senate, Sen. David Hinkins talked about how he was kicked out of housing allowed by Brigham Young University, a private school in Utah run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for smoking and drinking alcohol while there were rules in place. The Republican from Ferron then found someone else a place to live, which he said was the right thing to do for someone who can’t follow the rules or social norms.
He pretty much said that transgender people are the only ones to blame if they don’t fit in, which was a clear dig at them.
The only Republican in either house who spoke out against the bill was Sen. Daniel Thatcher of West Valley City. He said that his colleagues were wrong for passing laws over and over again that hurt a small group of weak people. He said that this bill only sets the stage for another case.
Leave a Comment