Now, they’re looking to extend those restrictions to off-campus and privately-owned shared housing — despite warnings that legislation could violate federal anti-discrimination laws.
HB404, sponsored by Rep. David Shallengerger, R-Orem, would create a new exemption in the Utah Fair Housing Act by allowing a landlord to “designate housing as single-sex based on biological sex.”
The bill would specify that it’s not “unlawful discrimination” for a landlord to restrict renters in “single-sex housing to individuals of the designated biological sex.”
Shallenberger said it’s meant to “narrowly” apply to off-campus housing with “intimate” shared spaces like rooms or bathrooms — intended for spaces that don’t already fall under a Utah law passed last year that requires public universities that provide on-campus housing to only rent sex-designated rooms to biological females and biological males.
“So if you’re offering a female apartment or a male apartment, this (bill) is saying, if there’s a shared intimate space — shared bathrooms or shared bedrooms in an all female apartment or an all male apartment — that the applications, in order to live there, would be based off of the birth sex,” Shallenberger told lawmakers during the bill’s first public hearing Friday.
The House Business, Labor and Commerce Committee voted 10-3 (with one Republican joining Democrats voting against) to endorse HB404 and advance it to the full House for consideration.
That’s even though Zoë Newmann, project manager for the Utah Housing Coalition, warned the bill “directly conflicts” with the federal Fair Housing Act, which bans discriminating in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability.
She said federal law does not allow a “broad exemption” for sex-segregated housing outside of college dormitories, specific shelters and other “very limited exemptions.” Federal law, she noted, also already allows exemptions for owner-occupied buildings with less than five units, single-family homes rented by the owner without the use of an agent, and housing operated by religious organizations and private clubs.
“So my question is, what are we really trying to accomplish here?” she said.
Newmann argued that passing HB404 “contradicts federal protections, puts tenants at risk of harm and confusion, and exposes landlords to serious legal liability.”
“At a time when Utah faces a housing crisis, we should not be … limiting access to safe and stable housing and not creating confusion and new barriers for already vulnerable communities,” Newmann said.
Shallenberger disputed that his bill would conflict with federal law, saying that “we’re trying to narrowly tailor this” to specific types of off-campus student housing. However, he added that “if there was some type of federal discrimination designation, then we’re saying the federal law … is going to trump this code.”
April Gardner, a Utahn, asked the committee not to advance the bill, urging them to instead uphold Utah’s 2015 law, which was lauded as a unique compromise between LGBTQ+ advocates and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That law banned sexual orientation and gender identity-based discrimination in housing and hiring while also providing safeguards for religious freedom.
“It’s been heartbreaking over the last five or six years to see pieces of that commitment be betrayed as bills have come every year that have nibbled away opportunity for trans people — what activities they can participate in, what health care they can have, and last year and again this year, where they can live,” Gardner said.
Gardner said it’s “horrifying” to see proposals allowing housing discrimination for transgender people during a time when many Utahns already struggle to afford to rent or buy homes.
“Trans people are far more likely to experience housing instability, and narrowing that within private spaces, particularly when you’re dealing with young people who are trying to go to college,” Gardner said.
Gardner asked “what spaces are we allowing left for trans Utahns?”
“Do we belong here anymore?” Gardner questioned. “Do you believe that trans Utahns are part of our communities? Do you value us? Or do you see trans people as dangerous? I beg you to recognize our humanity and stop taking away pieces of what trans people can do in our communities.”
Dalane England, vice president of the conservative advocacy group Utah Eagle Forum, spoke in support of the bill, arguing it “targets the rights and sovereignty and privacy of every individual, especially those who do not want to share private space with someone of the opposite sex.”
She also spoke in support of a change some Republican lawmakers floated during Friday’s committee, which would add a provision requiring landlords to give their renters notice to their renters whether they allow — or don’t allow — transgender renters in sex-segregated apartments.
“I think people deserve to know what they’re getting into beforehand,” she said.
The committee’s two Democrats tried unsuccessfully to stop the bill in its tracks, but Republican lawmakers voted to endorse the bill while saying they would make changes to it as it advances to the House floor.
HB404 is among several other bills Utah lawmakers are debating this year that target transgender people. Last week, legislators advanced a bill to turn Utah’s current moratorium on new hormonal prescriptions for transgender kids into a full ban. They also advanced a bill to restrict public employee insurance benefits from being used on transgender treatments or procedures.
Another bill — which would erase the word “gender” from a variety of areas in Utah state code and broadly remove anti-discrimination protections for transgender Utahns for not just housing, but also hate crimes, employment and other areas — has not yet received a public hearing.
This report was originally published at UtahNewsDispatch.com.
