Sports officials in the state of Utah may soon have extra protections from angry parents and coaches.
A proposed amendment to Utah Code would give judges the ability to more aggressively charge anyone who assaults a referee or official overseeing a sporting event, a change that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jon Hawkins, R-Pleasant Grove, said he hopes will make people “think twice about attacking or threatening an official.”
The issue is a serious one for officials at many levels of amateur and professional play: A 2023 survey of more than 35,000 officials done by the National Association of Sports Officials found that more than half of those surveyed (50.91%) reported feeling unsafe due to the behavior of administrators, coaches, players or spectators. That number was even higher in Utah, where 56.95% of officials said they have been concerned about their safety while overseeing games.
Longtime high school referee and umpire Paul Husselbee said he hit his personal breaking point after officiating a football game at Canyon View High School. “A woman came out of the stands, walked across the track … and began to berate us,” Husselbee said in an interview. “I said, ‘Lady, it’s time for you to go,’ and she proceeded to call me a ‘fat bastard’ and kick me in the shin.”
It was not the first time Husselbee had been forced to deal with angry parents, but the alleged attack cemented his sense that officials need more legal protection. “There’s no accountability,” he said, adding he feels that sportsmanship in the state of Utah and across the country more generally has “just gone to hell in a handbasket.”
Hawkins’ involvement with the issue began after an incident at his son’s baseball tournament last year.
“His team was about to play when there was a commotion on the field,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune. “As the game ended, there was a lot of yelling happening and one of the parents was like, ‘I’m going to meet you after the game at your car and we’re going to work this out like real men.’ The umpire found out I was a state legislator and said, ‘Hey, could you do something about this? This is ridiculous that I’m threatened with my life over a missed called strike.’”
According to the National Association of Sports Officials, 23 other states currently have similar laws on the books, 21 of which have criminal laws while two have civil statutes.
Hawkins’ proposal would make assaulting or threatening violence against a sports official an aggravating factor under Utah Code, though he originally wrote the bill to classify attacking an official as a misdemeanor. “I got some feedback from legislators, constituents, other community members that it was a little harsh,” he said. “So I talked to some people about how do we balance this and making it an aggravating factor for the judge was kind of a nice balance.”
Husselbee said he is thankful the legislature is taking it on in any form, but wishes that Hawkins had stuck with the original language, adding he thinks “there needs to be more teeth to it.”
The Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA), which had originally been working on legislation with former state Rep. Kera Birkeland, supports the bill. UHSAA Assistant Director Jeff Cluff said the issue has been of particular concern for the association since an alleged altercation at Skyridge High School in October of 2023 when one fan allegedly punched an official in the back of the head and others allegedly threw bottles at referees after a game against Pleasant Grove.
Bret Kinghorn, the former president of the Wasatch Chapter of the Utah High School Basketball Officials, said that referees make just $77 for officiating a boys’ varsity game and that parents, coaches and spectators seem to forget that the referees take on the work on top of other jobs. Kinghorn also said he is concerned about the retention of referees. “We found that if officials last at least two seasons — so you do year one, year two — they tend to stay,” he said. “But we lose a lot of officials in those first two years, and it’s largely because they can’t take the abuse.”
Ensuring a pipeline of officials is part of the hope for the bill’s supporters.
“We just really need to try and protect our officials, not only at the high school level, but at the youth level, and because if we don’t have officials at our young level, it leads into high school and it leads into college, so it’s really just something that causes a major problem for us,” Cluff said.
Hawkins, Cluff and others testified about the issue during a House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee hearing Monday, in between a series of bills that, among other things, aimed to more harshly prosecute immigrants and sex offenders. The bill was approved by the committee unanimously and will next be heard by the full House.
