Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Transgender issues will be a focus of debate for Utah lawmakers in 2025 for the fourth straight year.
- Community advocates rallied at the state Capitol Tuesday, defending transgender rights in light of anticipated legislation.
- The proposals up for deliberation pertain to dormitories at Utah universities, prison inmates and use of pronouns in schools.
SALT LAKE CITY — Transgender issues have again emerged as a focus of debate for the 2025 legislative session, the fourth year in a row Utah lawmakers have taken up the matter.
Debate still hasn't started in earnest on three House measures focused on the transgender community. But perhaps to get a jump on likely deliberation, a contingent of advocates from the community descended on the state Capitol Tuesday, the first day of the session, to defend transgender rights.
"Year after year in Utah and across the country, anti-trans ... legislation is being passed at a scary rate, and trans people are often the scapegoats to everything that's wrong in society when we just want to live," said Angel Showalter, who organized the demonstration.
Around 100 demonstrators showed up on the south steps of the state Capitol, where Showalter addressed the gathering. Then the group walked through the Capitol before returning to the steps. "We all just want to be ourselves and experience our trans joy, and the government is continuously saying that we can't do that, we shouldn't exist. Yet we continue to exist," Showalter said.
One of the three proposals that has emerged for the 2025 session, HB269, applies to transgender students at Utah's public universities who live in dorms. Spurred by an incident involving a student at Utah State University, it would allow transgender males and females to live in dorms corresponding with their gender identity only in certain circumstances. They'd need amended birth certificates corresponding with their gender identity or have undergone a "primary sex characteristic surgical procedure."
Gov. Spencer Cox, asked about the three measures during an interview Tuesday, said he's not up to speed on details of the legislation.
The topic is "certainly getting probably more attention than is necessary, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't get the attention. It is an important issue and one that continues to raise its head, and so I'm very hopeful that we can get to a point where we find that right balance," he said.
Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, and the minority leader in the Senate, offered a more critical take on the proposals, though she still needs to dive more closely into the language of the bills.
"This is the aftermath of HB261. This idea that we don't have to look into being inclusive and respectful about differences creates these types of situations," she said at a meeting with the press at the Capitol. HB261, passed last year despite opposition from the Democratic minority, eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Utah's public universities and other public entities in the state.
HB252, one of the other measures focused on the transgender community, would prohibit the Utah Department of Corrections from initiating gender-related surgery to help prison inmates. HB250 would prohibit school districts from disciplining teachers who use the name and pronouns of a student that coincide with his or her "biological gender," notwithstanding, apparently, the individual's preferences.
Issues related to the transgender community have sparked heated debate when they've come up. Utah lawmakers last year approved legislation restricting restroom access for transgender people. Lawmakers passed a prohibition on transgender girls participating in high school sports in 2022 and banned gender-related surgeries for minors in 2023.
Showalter wasn't aware of the three measures proposed in the Utah House this cycle. "I haven't even looked at this year's because I know they're going to be bad. I know they're going to be tough. All we can do is organize," Showalter said.
