As one Republican state lawmaker defended transgender students from the Senate floor Wednesday, another said Utah needs to “draw a line in the sand” in defining sex as strictly binary and unchangeable.
The showdown came during an initial vote from the body on HB269, which would ban transgender students from living in a state public college dorm that aligns with their gender identity. Instead, they would have to be assigned to a room based strictly on their sex at birth or to an area specifically designated as gender neutral.
Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, who has often broken away from his party in speaking up for the LGBTQ community in deeply red Utah, made an impassioned speech against the measure, calling it harmful to a small group of vulnerable people.
“The damage isn’t necessarily the bills that we pass,” he said. “It’s the message that we send. And sometimes we pass bills because they are messages.”
Thatcher also challenged a bill that ultimately passed in 2023 that banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth — getting so worked up that it raised his heart rate and he had to pause his remarks. And the year before that, he gave a strong plea against the approved measure blocking transgender girls from competing in high school sports — with his comments at the time attracting national headlines.
“In my world,” he said during the 2022 sport debate, “conservative doesn’t mean turning your back on your principles.”
He was the only Republican on Wednesday to vote against HB269, joining the Senate’s Democrats in the 22-7 tally after a contentious and emotional debate. The bill will have a second vote on the Senate floor in the coming days where it is expected to win final passage; it was approved last week by the House, where Democrat Rep. Sahara Hayes, Utah’s only openly LGBTQ lawmaker, made a similar reproach.
Thatcher said he believes “one of the big mistakes we’ve been making on the hill over the past few years” — with bills specifically targeting the LGBTQ community — is that people haven’t been invited to sit down together and come up with a better solution than legislation. In this case, he questioned why higher education and health experts weren’t consulted.
“Instead, in our rush to show that we’re doing something, I think we’re doing the wrong something,” Thatcher said.
He added: “It is my belief, just like with many of the other bills we’ve had that have infringed on gender identity, this will also be unconstitutional.” The senator said it’s not right or fair to force transgender girls to live with those who are born male.
The measure has been a hot button during the session, drafted partly in response to a conflict this semester at Utah State University.
Marcie Robertson, a 20-year-old transgender student, was assigned to be the resident advisor for a women’s dorm. When Avery Saltzman, a roommate assigned to the same suite, learned of Robertson’s identity, she said she felt uncomfortable living there and sharing a restroom.
Saltzman requested a transfer and received another room in the same building. After it was resolved, though, the situation drew widespread attention when Saltzman’s mom posted about it on social media, where conservative circles picked up on it.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Avery Saltzman, in red, speaks out in favor of HB269, as Marcie Robertson, a transgender resident assistant at USU, waits to speak out in opposition during a Senate Education Committee meeting at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.
Robertson has sad she has since faced harassment and death threats. During a committee hearing last week, she said: “My life has been excruciating since this began to unfold.” It’s been particularly painful, she added, to see legislation specifically crafted against her.
Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, the Senate sponsor of HB269, said during that same hearing that this bill is “one of those times where everyone is not thrilled with the policy that’s being proposed.”
On Wednesday, he also challenged Thatcher’s comments with a reference to the Bible and an insistence that the state recognize only biological sex at birth — and then, only male and female.
“I’m not a fan in legislation of using any kind of religious reference for purposes of ‘this is right’ or ‘this is wrong,’ but there is a story that I think provides some wisdom in the Bible,” Brammer said. “… We see what happened to a society in the Tower of Babel when their language was confounded. It was to the point where people could not understand one another.”
He said people have done that with sex and gender identity. But in the biblical tale, it was God who confused the language of the people building the city — not the people themselves.
“In this instance, there are almost no other things in our language that are as critical and as originally binary as male and female,” he said, veering into a discussion that raised some eyebrows from his colleagues on when that binary started.
“In fact, even before we were sentient beings, 1.2 billion years ago, we differentiated on male and female,” Brammer added. “And about 200 million years ago, we had some level of sentience. So we have a billion years ahead of us where it was male and female.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2025.
The senator said HB269 is about defining those terms. And for individuals who fall outside of them based on their sex at birth, such as those who are born intersex, they have the option of the gender-neutral dorms.
“It does account for abnormalities under the term intersex,” he said. " … We’re getting so much back and forth on the terms male and female that it is important that we draw a line in the sand on it.”
He was joined in support by Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, who wants the bill expanded further, applying to the private housing operated for students adjacent to several public universities in the state that don’t oversee their own dorms. That includes Utah Valley University in Orem, for instance.
Sen. David Hinkins, R-Ferron, shared about his experience living in approved housing for the private religious school Brigham Young University when he went to college. He said he smoked and drank alcohol, which are against the rules for students there, and was kicked out.
“I didn’t go to the government or anybody else,” he said. “I went and found another place to live that wasn’t BYU-approved.”
He said that’s the appropriate action for someone who can’t live by the “guidelines” — either those enforced or expected in society. “I’m tired of people coming to the state,” he said. “... If you don’t fit in, then that’s your own fault. … I’m just tired of this ‘poor me’-type stuff.”
Meanwhile, Democrats questioned if the bill was a new spinoff of the racist “separate but equal” policies that once segregated Black and white residents in America. Sen. Jen Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, said HB269 is making the transgender community feel “as if they’re being legislated out of existence.”
Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, asked how the bill isn’t an equal protection violation for a transgender individual who has legally changed their birth certificate to align with their gender identity.
“It’s not an equal protection violation because the designation of male and female has been upheld in court in almost every circumstance, and it is not tied to the genitalia of the person,” Brammer responded. “It is tied to their genetic makeup at birth.”
