Utah lawmakers gave final approval to a bill limiting where transgender students can reside in dorm rooms at public universities Monday, after online backlash against a transgender resident assistant at Utah State University. Sponsor Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, said the bill allows transgender students to reside in gender-neutral housing, meaning they will still have options for on-campus housing.
"I want to be very, very clear: This is a sensitive and emotional issue, but no person deserves harassment — trans or otherwise," she told her House colleagues last month.
The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday morning after the Senate approved it on Thursday with minor changes. There was no discussion of the bill on the House floor, but Gricius cast some lighthearted shade toward senators in describing the recent changes.
"Our dear senators didn't know what a birth certificate was, so we added the definition for them," she said.
That definition states that an "unamended birth certificate" is "a birth certificate with no amendment history; or with no amendment history that: does not include gender-related amendments; or includes gender-related amendments that only: correct(s) an error or omission resulting from a scrivener's error ... or correct(s) a misidentification of birth sex for an intersex individual."
HB269 passed along mostly partisan lines, with one Republican voting against it in the Senate. Republicans have said the bill protects women from biological males in private spaces, while Democrats argued the issue is already addressed on an individual basis at each university and the bill needlessly singles out transgender Utahns.