STATE OF UTAH — On his bi-monthly Direct Link with Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Tuesday evening, the governor addressed the planned override of his veto of House Bill 11 (HB 11), the transgender sports ban. Governor Cox said the bill was changed substantially in the last few minutes of the legislative session.
“It did put in place a complete ban, which most people in Utah support. What they don’t know is that it also excluded all of our schools from any liability protection that they would otherwise have from the state. And Utah High School Athletic Association was never included in that bill to get some protection as well” he explained.
Cox said there are 10 or 11 states that have gone through this and there are lawsuits all across the country already going on.
“And so we know there is going to be a lawsuit, we know it’s going to be a very expensive lawsuit, because we’ve been able to see what’s happening in other places. Idaho was the first state and they’re in the middle of their big lawsuit. So the High School Athletic Association had told us last year and this year, if this bill ever passed, we need to make sure that we’re covered, that the state will help pay for this. Otherwise it will bankrupt us, because they just got out of a big lawsuit.”
The governor encourages people to read the letter surrounding his veto on his website.
“Also, I said ‘look. There’s only one transgender female that is participating in girls’ sports in our state right now’. It made sense to me to think ‘hey if these other lawsuits are going, why don’t we let them play out a little bit and let other states pay the millions of dollars. And where it’s not impacting girls’ sports here in our state right now, let that play out’. And so, I talked to the legislature, they knew there was going to be a veto, because we couldn’t let this bill go in as it was, because of the High School Athletic Association piece.”
So on Friday, the legislature will override the veto and then the governor will call a special session at the same time, which will allow them to make changes to the bill.
During the program, Governor Cox was asked about education funding as it pertains to growth in rural Utah.
“This is a very, very good session for education and for education funding. We were able to get really historic numbers into the education fund. The legislature was very generous, the Weighted Pupil Unit, the WPU, is the way we divide up those dollars evenly among students in the state, a six percent increase there which we’ve never seen anything like that.”
Cox said there were several other programs that got funded on top of that. He said that is great news, especially for rural Utah.
Direct Link is a bi-monthly program with Utah’s governor, and is sponsored by the Utah Broadcasters’ Association and was hosted by For the People host Jason Williams on Newstalk KVNU.