Transgender students at Utah’s state colleges and universities may soon need to follow new restrictions on their campus housing. HB269, sponsored by Republican Rep. Stephanie Gricius, bans transgender students attending public colleges and universities from living in sex-designated dorm rooms that align with their gender identity. Instead, they would have to either live in a room that matches their sex at birth or opt-in to reside in a “gender neutral” dorm.
The bill cleared the House on a 59-13 vote. The Senate amended the bill and passed it 20-7. After the House’s quick concurrence to the amendment on Monday, it now heads to Gov. Spencer Cox. One Republican joined all Democratic lawmakers in voting against the bill.
Gricius stated throughout the legislative process that her legislation is intended to ensure the privacy of all students.
There are no exceptions to the bill, even if a transgender student has undergone gender-affirming surgery and changed their birth certificate.
As Republican Sen. Brady Brammer said during a floor debate on Feb. 5, the bill is simple.
“It says you need to stay in the male dorms if you're male, female dorms if you're female.”
Brammer presented a small amendment around the definition of an “unamended birth certificate.” That required it to return to the House for a quick vote before it could be sent to the governor.
The bill is partly in response to a viral social media post from the mother of a Utah State University student who was assigned to share a dorm suite with a transgender residential assistant. While they didn’t share a room, they did share a bathroom and common areas. The student said she was uncomfortable and her request for a room change was granted.
The Senate’s debate of the bill largely revolved around the Legislature getting involved with campus housing policy.
To Democratic Sen. Jen Plumb, it gave her pause because it felt like a “separate but equal” scenario. She explained when she moved to California from Utah to receive her undergraduate degree at the University of California Los Angeles, she experienced a lot of uncomfortable situations, like students throwing up in the shared washing machine or witnessing various types of violence. But to her, those situations were part of becoming an adult.
“The piece that's sticking with me most right now is that if something makes other folks uncomfortable, and our decision is to legislate, that we have a lot of legislation to do,” Plumb said, “because you don't have to be a transgender person to have discomfort follow things around you.”
Democratic Sen. Kathleen Riebe said the bill would take away local control of universities that usually have policies already in place to handle roommate disagreements.
Republican Sen. David Hinkins said if a student doesn’t want to follow the guidelines, they don’t have to live on campus. He said when he was a student at Brigham Young University he couldn’t follow the guidelines enforced by the private religious institution so he left.
“It's ridiculous. In my opinion, there's other places to live … if you don't fit in, then that's your own fault,” Hinkins said.
Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher was the lone GOP ‘no’ vote. Thatcher has consistently spoken out against legislation he believes unfairly targets the LGBTQ+ community.
“It is my belief that, just like many of the other bills that we have passed that infringe on gender identity, this will also be unconstitutional,” he said.
For Thatcher, the bigger issue are the messages these kinds of bills send to the LGBTQ+ community.
Brammer rebuked Thatcher’s claim that the bill was unconstitutional. He said the Supreme Court has taken up issues related to gender identity before, pointing to a recent case over gender-affirming care.
“We do need to set the definition because that has been something where we're getting so much back and forth on – the terms male and female that it is important that we draw a line in the sand on it.”
