Utah lawmakers have been considering a few bills during the 2026 legislative session that take aim at transgender residents, including bills that would restrict trans Utahns’ access to housing and gender-affirming health care.
Virginia Solomon is the president of the Summit Pride Foundation, an LGBTQ+ group in the Wasatch Back.
“This is the fifth year that we’ve seen Utah participating in what’s an unfortunate national trend of targeting the LGBTQ+ community, and in particular the trans community, with legislation,” they said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Feb. 25.
One bill has already been sent to the governor for his signature. If it passes into law, it will allow landlords to restrict single-sex housing based on sex assigned at birth.
Another bill, which failed in a Senate committee, would have restricted insurance coverage of gender-affirming care.
A third bill aims to enact a complete ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth in Utah. The legislation is still under consideration.
Rep. Rex Shipp, the Republican from Cedar City who’s sponsoring the bill, said in a committee meeting Feb. 18 the bill is meant to expand on the state’s 2023 “moratorium” on gender-affirming care for youth.
“Transgender treatments, affirming care treatments, are not what is best for these youth,” he said.
He also pushed back on the validity of a 2024 study, commissioned by Utah lawmakers, that found gender-affirming care benefits trans youth.
Solomon said the bills are dehumanizing and have implications for everyone, not just trans people.
“I'm a professor for my day job, and I teach the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights that really talks about civil rights as being something that all humans have access to,” they said. “And if we're starting to decide who does and does not have access to those, what does that mean about deciding who [is] and who is not human?”
They said bills that curtail LGBTQ+ people’s rights “set a precedent” by taking away local decision-making power and often ripple into the larger community.
Solomon added restricting one group’s access to health care could cascade into restrictions on other groups.
In a committee meeting Feb. 19 about one of the health care bills, Republican Sen. Todd Weiler said he’s not comfortable with lawmakers saying one person can access care while another cannot. He gave the example of one woman seeking a mastectomy for breast cancer prevention and another person seeking the same procedure as gender-affirming care.
“Why would the insurance cover for one of them, but not cover for the other one? Do you see what I’m saying here?” he asked. “Isn’t that a bit of an equal-protection type of issue?”
Solomon said health care decisions should be made by medical experts.
“The government doesn’t have a place in those kinds of decisions,” they said.
As of Feb. 25, the bill seeking to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth had passed the state House and been sent to the Senate for a vote.
The 2026 legislative session ends March 6.
