Utah’s 104 legislators spent the last 45 days passing a groundbreaking parental rights law, setting new priorities for the state’s colleges and universities, and increasing some criminal sentences, as they worked to turn constituent concerns into policy for the state’s 3.5 million residents.
Debates between the House and Senate this session, which ended Friday at midnight, also touched on elections, immigration and emerging technologies as lawmakers searched for solutions to the rising cost of living, falling confidence in government and persistent problems with public safety.
Despite disappointing revenue projections, legislative leadership — including Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper — carved out space in a tight budget for the fifth consecutive year of income tax cuts, slightly reducing the rate for all Utahns and providing targeted tax credits for young families, senior citizens and businesses.
But this came at the expense of other spending requests which went unfunded, leaving the governor’s priorities, some social services and countless bills without the hoped-for support.
Amid constant change coming from the White House, including a brief federal funding freeze, Utah’s elected representatives:
- Paved the way for expanded deportation operations in the state;
- Passed first-in-the-nation app store verification requirements;
- Realigned public universities to focus on in-demand majors;
- Laid the groundwork for more nuclear power in Utah;
- Produced a vote-by-mail compromise that aimed to increase both security and convenience;
- Banned collective bargaining by public sector unions;
- Banned public entities from flying ideological flags;
- Made it more difficult for citizens to access public records through the GRAMA process; and,
- Set the gears in motion to welcome the world in 2034.
Here are the biggest policy changes from the 2025 legislative session that will impact residents of the Beehive State.
Education
Utah’s higher education institutions lost 10% of their annual budget but can reclaim funds with Legislature-approved “reallocation/reinvestment” plans. Proponents of HB265 said campus inefficiencies will be remedied. Opponents worried liberal education programs and jobs are vulnerable.
The Legislature voted to prohibit K-12 students from using cellphones during class and to provide “no cost” school lunch for Utah’s K-12 students previously eligible for “reduced fare.”
Lawmakers also added American civics classes to high school graduation requirements, expanded career and technical education opportunities and amended the Utah Fits All scholarship program to limit extracurricular expenses to 20% of the scholarship amount.
Labor unions
HB267, sponsored by Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, which bans collective bargaining for public sector labor unions, quickly became one of the most controversial bills of the session.
Lawmakers said they worked with labor unions to come to a compromise and introduced multiple changes to the bill. When they weren’t able to reach consensus, the Senate passed the original version of the bill, which became one of the first bills signed by Gov. Spencer Cox.
A few weeks later the Senate introduced and passed SB327, which changed some of the definitions included in HB267, while the state’s education union announced plans to launch a referendum effort to repeal the collective bargaining ban.
Elections
On the second-to-last day of the session, lawmakers passed the biggest reform to how Utahns vote in years. Following the contentious 2024 election cycle and after a pair of critical audits, House leadership backed a bill, HB300, that would end universal vote-by-mail and would require in-person photo ID for most ballots.
Instead of rejecting the proposal, Senate leadership engaged in intensive negotiations over the seven-week session, producing a compromise solution that county clerks did not oppose. It asked voters to place the final four digits of a state ID on their ballot, required voters to opt-in to vote-by-mail by 2029 and said ballots must be received by 8 p.m on election night.
A dozen other election bills — dealing with runoff elections, voter roll clean up, the lieutenant governor’s election oversight, county clerk reporting deadlines and transparency surrounding voter information — mostly failed to gain traction across both chambers.
Immigration
Two weeks before the session began, House Republicans announced a package of law enforcement bills targeting what they said were the effects of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
The Legislature eventually passed bills that would enhance prison time for immigrants convicted of criminal reentry and that would increase local coordination with federal immigration authorities for immigrants convicted of certain class A misdemeanors.
But efforts to expand employee immigration verification and impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers both failed amid concerns about the negative impacts on the business community and the number of criminal enhancements coming from the House.
Energy
Lawmakers took a loud stance on the embrace of nuclear energy and created a nuclear consortium to carve out Utah’s energy future by creating “energy development zones” to give counties a process to host future energy infrastructure.
With an infusion of $8 million dollars for the governor’s nuclear energy initiative, the state is trying to get ahead of pressing demands on the grid. Lawmakers also took a step to protect Utah ratepayers from out of state projects that would drive up costs.
Tax cuts and budget
Lawmakers further reduced the income tax rate from 4.55% to 4.5%, giving the typical Utah family savings of about $45 a year. That same tax package — worth about $127 million — also expands the state’s child tax credit to cover children age 5 or younger and creates a tax credit for businesses that invest in child care.
A separate proposal will remove the state tax on Social Security benefits for about 90,000 Utahns by raising the income cap from $75,000 to $90,000. That’s less than Cox asked for — he wanted to eliminate the tax entirely — but it’s seen as a compromise as Capitol Hill Republicans have navigated a relatively meager revenue year.
Housing
“Disappointed” was the word used by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, to describe his reaction to the progress made this session on housing affordability. Bills mandating increased density failed to advance, including HB90, which would have forced urban municipalities to permit homes to be built on tiny lots.
Instead, Fillmore said lawmakers focused on making “incremental” changes. Among the handful of largely technical housing bills that passed was SB181 that would allow some homes to be built without garages.
Proposals that got a thumbs-down from lawmakers like using a share of state liquor sale profits to boost an existing loan fund could resurface as the state finalizes a new housing plan expected to be completed this fall.
Homelessness
The 2025 legislative session may have completed Utah’s pivot away from the housing-first approach to homelessness that the state pioneered two decades ago.
Lawmakers in both chambers and both parties approved proposals enhancing drug use penalties in and around homeless shelters, enabling first responders to connect people to resources and refocusing the state’s homeless services system on long term recovery instead of the number of shelter beds.
The emphasis on law enforcement was seen in a bill passed along party lines that would condition some funds transferred to cities on local police partnering with state public safety officials to address homelessness. A bill that would have allowed for expanded emergency shelter space during hot summer days failed in the House.
Social media and minors
Lawmakers passed several bills to address user privacy and child safety online.
HB418 gained national attention as the first law in the country to give users the right to manage their data, altering the business dynamics among users, advertisers and platform owners.
Lawmakers also passed SB142, a first-in-the nation approach to parental rights over what their children access on their phones, that requires app stores to obtain parental consent for minors downloading apps.
Criminal justice and judicial reform
Lawmakers floated a slew of proposals targeting the judiciary by potentially expanding the Supreme Court, significantly raising the threshold for judicial retention and giving lawmakers oversight of judicial performance.
Legislative leadership announced they had reached a compromise with the judiciary during the final week of the session, abandoning three of the most controversial proposals, and passing a bill to let the governor pick the chief justice.
Lawmakers introduced around 85 bills this session to enhance criminal penalties. Both chambers were able to unite on dozens of proposals, including bills to increase sentences for sex trafficking and fentanyl distribution.
Ballot initiatives
The Utah Legislature applied heightened standards to citizen ballot initiatives following Utah Supreme Court rulings that applied similar expectations to lawmakers.
A pair of bills would require a citizen initiative to have a detailed description of how it will be paid for and would propose a constitutional amendment requiring citizen-initiated legislation to pass with 60% of the vote if it changes taxes.
Another package of bills would work together to change the publication requirements for proposed amendments to Utah’s Constitution and other ballot questions so they can be published online instead of having to be published in print newspapers.
Social issues
While less so than in recent years, culture war controversies still drew attention to Capitol Hill. The Legislature voted to prohibit public school teachers and government buildings from displaying most flags. The exceptions include official U.S., state, country, military, sports and school flags.
Lawmakers also passed a bill that would restrict transgender students from living in gender-specific dorms that differ from their biological sex.
A bill that would have implemented a Tennessee-style ban on “adult-oriented performances” in public or in the presence of a minor stalled after state attorneys said the criminal offenses already exist in state code.
Church and state
The Legislature responded to concerns from local Nothing Bundt Cakes owners by passing a bill prohibiting franchisors from changing contracts to require that franchise owners open on religious days. The bill passed Friday — the same day Nothing Bundt Cakes told local franchisees that they must open on Sundays or face legal action.
The House and Senate took opposite positions on whether religious organizations should pay city transportation fees tied to property ownership. A compromise bill exempting some religious properties was abandoned for future sessions.
On the final day of the session, legislators also approved an expanded list of official holy days.
Another piece of legislation passed on the last day would require faith-based student groups at public universities to receive the same rights and benefits of all other groups.
Health care
After years of hitting dead ends in the Legislature, a bill to cover doula services with Medicaid finally passed during the final week of the session.
The Legislature also approved bills outlining specific requirements for free standing emergency rooms in Utah and establishing protections for physicians in medical malpractice suits.
Lawmakers passed a bill to provide regular cancer screenings for firefighters around the state since data has shown that cancer is the leading cause of the death for firefighters.
Government transparency
Lawmakers passed bills that will make it more difficult and expensive for Utahns to access government records. They created more exceptions to the state’s open meeting laws and eliminated public scrutiny of the process for selecting public university presidents.
SB277 wiped out the longstanding State Records Committee, the seven-member volunteer panel that resolves disputes over whether records are public or private. An administrative law judge appointed by the governor will replace the committee.
HB69 prevents someone who successfully gets access to records on appeal from recovering court costs, unless the government showed bad faith. That means they could incur an expense opposing the government even if it’s decided they should have been given the records in the first place.
Child care
State legislators made child care reform a top priority this year. One bill secured Medicaid for eligible foster children and provided them with financial literacy education.
A pair of bipartisan bills provided tax credits to employers who maintain day care centers for employees and permitted unused, state-owned buildings to be used as child care centers.
New technology
Utah lawmakers considered a slew of proposals in the 2025 session aimed at creating new guardrails for the use of artificial intelligence tools, but only a handful made it to the finish line.
The Legislature established new protections for users of mental health chatbots that use artificial intelligence and outlined requirements for Utah law enforcement agencies to establish policies for AI tools.
Legislators also guaranteed the right for businesses to accept payments in cryptocurrency and created a new board to assess the feasibility of, and best site for, a future Utah spaceport.
Miscellaneous bills
College athletics: The Legislature passed a bill allowing universities to directly pay college athletes for the use of their name, image and likeness. It requires an audit of NIL spending every five years.
Utahns: The Legislature passed a bill formalizing the word “Utahn” as the official nickname for people from Utah.
Dogs: The Legislature voted to remove the liability from dog owners if someone trespassing on their property gets bit by their dog.
Federalism: The state legislature introduced a total of 26 bills reaffirming the importance of federalism with new college programs and statements on public lands and water conservancy.
Cosmetology: The Legislature changed the types of licenses available for cosmetologists and how many hours of education are required to become licensed.
Child influencer bill: The Legislature approved financial protections for children featured in their parents’ social media content that would allow children to delete content after they turn 18 years old.
Daylight saving: The Legislature got halfway there to get rid of daylight saving time and keep Utah on standard time before the proposal failed in the Senate.
Contributing: Bridger Beal-Cvetko of KSL, Caitlin Keith, Amy Joi O’Donoghue, Lisa Riley Roche, Jason Swensen, Dennis Romboy, Art Raymond, Emma Pitts