It’s been dubbed Utah’s “bathroom bill,” but House Bill 257 is entitled “sex-based designations for privacy, anti-bullying and women’s opportunities.”
Now that Gov. Spencer Cox signed the controversial bill Jan. 30, “male” and “female” are defined in Utah law for the first time. Critics say the bill’s definitions, under which women are ova producers and men are ova fertilizers, deny the existence of transgender and nonbinary people.
And HB 257 takes those definitions and applies them not just to public bathrooms but to a “facility, program, or event” controlled or owned by the government.
Attorney Marina Lowe, who serves as Equality Utah’s policy director, says that broad language raises questions. Most of the discussion around HB 257 has focused only on changing rooms, locker rooms and bathrooms.
“I think it remains to be seen how the impact of this legislation will bump up against the existence of programs, or even federal law, that speak to situations where you're designating based on sex,” she said.
HB 257 bars males and females from programs designated for the opposite sex, especially within the public education system.
This could discourage or bar transgender Utahns from sex-designated public programs, like scholarships or health and resource centers.
The bill’s sponsor, Summit County Rep. Kera Birkeland, says the language is not intended to be broad.
She says references to a “facility, program or event” are intended to apply to the K-12 setting. Provisions about public facilities would include government buildings.
“Anyone can make a case for whatever they want,” Birkeland said. “But it's really nicely written in a way that I don't think that anyone's going to be able to make any assumption outside of the legislative intent.”
The bill was narrowed multiple times during the 2024 general session.
Provisions explicitly restricting access to sex-designated areas of rape crisis and domestic violence shelters were removed, The Salt Lake Tribune reported, due to concerns the bill jeopardized millions of dollars in federal assistance for Utah crime victims.
The bill was amended so it didn’t affect some sporting facilities. The Tribune reports it’s also not clear how it affects the publicly-owned Salt Lake City International Airport.
How the new law affects transgender Utahns’ access to other events, programs and facilities may not be clear until government agencies and municipalities begin to enforce it.
