In what Democratic Party chair Diane Lewis calls a shameful, discriminatory attack, GOP lawmakers in Salt Lake City have adopted a strategy pushing controversial bills — including House Bills 261 and 257 — through the Utah House in the first week of the new general session.
SALT LAKE CITY – To the dismay of Democratic lawmakers here, their GOP colleagues in the Utah Legislature seem intent on passing controversial proposals early in the 2024 legislative session.
As they did in 2023, the Republican majority on Capitol Hill pushed two disputed bills through the House during the week of Jan. 16 to 21 at the new session of the Legislature.
Those proposals are House Bills 261, which curtails diversity initiatives adopted by the state’s public entities, and 257, which prevents individuals from using a gender-specific bathroom that differs from their biological sex.
“Using vulnerable communities as a political punching bag, as the supermajority has done, is shameful and self-serving,” said Diane Lewis, the chair of the Utah Democratic Party, condemning both proposals.
“Utahns will hold extreme Republicans accountable for those votes in November,” she added.
Similar threatening predictions from Lewis in the past have had little effect on election outcomes.
Early in the 2023 general session of the Legislature, Gov. Spencer Cox signed the Transgender Medical Treatment and Procedures into immediate effect.
As originally proposed in the Senate, GOP Sen. Mike Kennedy’s bill would have placed a four-year moratorium on transgender surgeries and the administration of puberty-blocking hormones for minors while more research was conducted on those treatments.
In the House – thanks in part to the efforts of Rep. Katy Hall (R-South Ogden) — the revised bill was changed to outlaw transgender surgeries for minors and transform the moratorium into an outright ban.
On Jan. 19, House Speaker Mike Schultz (R-Hooper) defended fast-tracking controversial proposals early in the 2024 legislative session, saying that strategy gives lawmakers more time to consider them during the relatively slow first week of the Legislature.
That strategy also gives Democrats and special interest groups little time to mobilize public outrage against the proposed laws, however.
Despite the fact that trans people make up just 1 percent of Utah’s population, Democrats point to the obvious fact that GOP lawmakers seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time legislating their basic human rights.
“Not only does House Bill 257 perpetuate harmful and dangerous stereotypes about transgender Utahns,” Lewis argued, “it is also not based on any facts or data, which the bill sponsor herself admitted.”
That proposal, advanced by Rep. Kera Birkland (R-Morgan), would prevent individuals from using a gender-specific bathroom that differs from their biological sex.
The only exceptions to that law would be for individuals who have undergone gender-related surgery and legally changed the sex on their birth certificate.
Birkeland terms HB 257 a simple effort to protect privacy in schools, prisons and other taxpayer-funded buildings. The proposed law also includes a requirement that such buildings provide more unisex or single-stall restrooms and locker rooms.
But Lewis calls HB 257 “ … a shameful, discriminatory attack on a community that is already extremely marginalized and vulnerable.”
Consideration of House Bills 261 and 257 will now shift to the Senate, where Senate President Stuart Adams (R-Layton) predicts that they will be debated in the next week or so.