A veto override by the GOP of House Bill 11, which banned transgender athletes from high school girls sports, was defended by Rep. Dan Johnson (R-North Logan).
NORTH LOGAN – At their nominating convention, Cache County Republican delegates cheered every time the House Bill 11 was mentioned.
Promising to “protect girls sports,” the GOP supermajority in the Utah Legislature voted on Mar. 25 to override Gov. Spencer Cox’ veto of H.B. 11, a bill banning transgender athletes from participating in girls sports.
“It’s no coincidence that they held their veto override session the day before the first GOP county conventions will take place,” said Utah Democratic party chair Diane Lewis.
“The fact that they would put their own reelection bids ahead of thoughtful, measured policy on such a delicate issue just goes to show that the Republican supermajority values politics over people, plain and simple.”
But Republicans see the issue differently.
“(H.B. 11) wasn’t what we’d talked about,” said state Rep. Dan Johnson (R-North Logan).
“It was a last minute amendment, which I think that a lot of people didn’t quite understand. It just wasn’t the kind of thing that we wanted. We were sure that the governor would veto it and we’d get another change to debate it in another form.”
The chance came Friday. In the morning, the Legislature was called into session to override the veto; which they did. In the afternoon, they were called into session again to add an indemnification provision that protects the Utah High School Athletic Association (UHSAA) and local school board from the inevitable lawsuits to come.
“If the Legislature is going to pass a law and lawsuits result from enforcing that law,” Johnson said, “then the Legislature needs to be responsible for defending it.”
With a background in high school education, Johnson believes that the Utah Legislature’s action actually protected Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or other education program that receives funding from the federal government.
But critics claim that the veto override proves that the GOP is more concerned with divisive and counter-productive culture-war messaging than actually addressing the issues facing our state.
“Utah Democrats stand with transgender Utahns against these hateful attacks,” said Lewis.
“Let’s be honest. The Republican supermajority wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars by calling themselves into an emergency special session so they could override the governor’s veto for one reason – to protect themselves from political attacks by extremists in their own party.”
Democrats claim that Utahns of all political affiliations and the state’s business community are already decrying H.B. 11.
But there is still popular support of the law within the local Republican Party, as evidenced by those cheers on Saturday at the nominating convention.
The law is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, barring legal action to postpone it.