A bill that originally aimed to ban pride flags in schools and on government property was amended Thursday night — hours after sponsor Rep. Trevor Lee said the legislation would let schools display Nazi and Confederate flags in some instances — to allow flags part of a public school district or charter school’s approved educational curriculum to be displayed in a classroom.
As amended, HB77 now says “a historic version of a flag” that is in “accordance with curriculum the [local education authority] governing board approves.”
The bill defines a flag as “a usually rectangular piece of fabric” with a specific symbolic design, and the displaying of a flag as “to place a flag in a prominent location on government property where the flag is easily visible.”
The bill still outlaws flags not listed as exemptions. The sanctioned flags include the Utah and U.S. flags, as well as military flags, flags for other countries or Native American tribes, and the official flags for colleges and universities.
The changes to the bill come after The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the Layton Republican said in a hearing Thursday that the legislation that would allow teachers to display Nazi and Confederate flags in the classroom. “There are instances where in classrooms, you have curriculum that is needed to use flags such as World War II, Civil War,” he said. “You may have a Nazi flag. You may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags for the purpose of those lesson plans if it’s part of the curriculum, and that is okay.”
In an interview that night, Lee denied that he ever said there would be instances where a teacher could “display” a Nazi flag, and expressed displeasure that The Tribune would publish his testimony about displaying Nazi and Confederate flags in classrooms.
“There is a difference between displaying flags in curriculum when you’re teaching on them,” he said. “You don’t censor history here. That’s not what we’re doing.” When asked to further explain his remarks, Lee hung up the phone.
Asked Friday morning about the amended bill, Lee commented only on the headline of the previous story on his bill. “Redact your ridiculous headline,” he wrote in a text message, before adding that The Tribune should “apologize for sowing divide and spreading hate to the general public.”
Lee has touted on the social media platform X that his bill aims to specifically ban pride flags in schools. The House Education Committee passed the version of the bill including government buildings Thursday.
‘Welcoming places for all students’
Rep. Sahara Hayes, D-Salt Lake City, was one of just two votes against Lee’s bill among the House Education Committee. She is also the legislature’s only openly LGBTQ lawmaker.
“I haven’t personally sat through such an intense barrage of homophobia before,” she said of Thursday’s committee hearing. “That one did not have that veneer of decorum. This was just a lot of people saying really hurtful things on public record. … It’s not pleasant to sit through that.”
The original bill targeting schools was of serious concern for the lawmaker, she said in an interview, but the expansion to government buildings and property was more worrying.
“I struggled to see how that’s not overreach,” she said. “We’re the state. We can decide what’s happening on the state level and what’s best. … It’s not our job to do that fine-grain detail work. That’s for local governments who know their communities best. It would be really weird for me to say, ‘This is what St. George should be doing,’ because I don’t represent that area.”
She’s also concerned about a bill regarding health care for incarcerated transgender people sponsored by Clearfield Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee. The bill, HB252, would require juveniles in custody be held according to their sex assigned at birth and ban transgender adults from starting hormone therapy while in the prison system.
“It feels like sending a message both to the federal government that Utah is here to play ball on targeting the trans community,” Hayes said, “and it feels like a message to the LGBTQ community that we have to continue to watch our backs during this legislative session.”
The lawmaker also said she fully expects Lee’s pride flags bill will pass a full vote of the House. “I wish I could say otherwise,” Hayes said, “but I have been here long enough to see the tea leaves like this.”
Marina Lowe, the policy director for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Utah, said the group had been pushing for an amendment to the bill, a version of which was introduced by Rep. Tracy Miller, R-South Jordan, which reads, “Nothing in this section … removes the agency’s obligation to protect all students from discrimination.”
“This is intended to be a bill, if we take the sponsor at his word and others who worked in this legislation, that this isn’t targeting any particular group, but is intended to create neutrality,” Lowe said in an interview. “We wanted to address the concerns that I think are legitimately felt by the LGBTQ community, and this was aimed at them and at pride flags in particular, and [we] wanted the legislature to affirmatively commit in legislation to a statement basically reaffirming that Utah classrooms are welcoming places for all students.”
Despite the amendment’s inclusion, Lowe said the group has “great concerns” about the bill after a substitute expanded the bill to apply not just to schools, but to all government buildings and property.
“I think limiting what cities, counties, and other governmental agencies can say by the use of flags is going to run into some constitutional problems,” she said in an interview. Equality Utah, she added, would like to see the expansion to all government buildings and properties be removed from the legislation. It remained in the bill as of the Friday morning amendment.
‘Leave that one on the table’
Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, speaking of Lee’s comments about Nazi and Confederate flags in an interview Friday, said, “It’s disappointing, but it seems like we have literal white supremacists here in the legislature advocating for really nasty things in our classrooms. That disappoints me greatly.”
Blouin is no stranger to drama over pride flags. In June 2023, he hung one in the window of his office to celebrate Pride month. “I think someone submitted a complaint,” he said. “Someone requested that I take it down, and I’m like, ‘Under what authority? It’s not like it’s a swastika or something.’”
The following legislative session, lawmakers changed Utah code to limit and make uniform what could be hung in the windows of the Capitol buildings.
“Why are we wasting hundreds of people’s time and taxpayer dollars?” Blouin said. “It’s silly that this is where our focus lies. … It’s a perfect distraction bill from all the things that matter.”
He’s hopeful that Lee’s flag bill may not have a path through the Senate.
“I think the Senate might be more reasonable and hear those comments and have concern over what’s expressed there,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a Democratic or Republican issue. I think those are concerning at face value, if that is what is being communicated by a legislator. … I have hope that the Senate would just kind of leave that one on the table.”
This is the second year in a row GOP lawmakers have attempted to ban pride flags in classrooms.
Lawmakers tried twice last year to prohibit pride flags in schools — the first effort would have gone beyond flags to bar school employees from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity at all, but was voted down after it was criticized for being too vague.
In the final hours of the 2024 session, a Republican senator replaced legislation specifying how schools should deal with employees who are the subject of a criminal investigation with a de facto pride flag ban.
Lee has previously come under fire for comments he has made on race, as well as the LGBTQ+ community. In his first legislative campaign, Lee used a slur to describe transgender people on a conservative podcast.
The representative made posts attacking the LGBTQ+ community on a personal account on X, then known as Twitter, and criticizing the use of pride flags, The Tribune reported in 2022.
In June that year, Lee replied “Gosh, this is amazing” to a post that claimed the message of Pride Month is “satanic.” Earlier that year, he posted a meme insinuating that public school teachers influence children to change their gender identity. Replying to his own post, he tagged the account of Gov. Spencer Cox.
When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized for a church leader and Brigham Young University professor making insensitive comments about its previous practice of banning Black men from receiving the priesthood, Lee tweeted, “BYU is a progressive cesspool now.”
