With a new support crew, trans Utahns fight a range of bills in the Legislature

Transgender Utahns fighting efforts to further limit their access to housing and gender-affirming medical care are getting encouragement at the Capitol this year from supporters with hugs, snacks and a big banner saying “you can’t legislate us out of existence.”

The colorful display stands out against a backdrop of beige walls and wooden benches. It made frequent appearances over the last month as the Utah Legislature considered bills aimed at the state’s small transgender community for a fifth year in a row.

Jack Adams, with the newly formed QT Care Team, held one end of the banner decorated with pink and blue doves Thursday as some people streaming out of a legislative committee meeting shed tears and accepted hugs from the group.

“Doing care work for each other is the only way we make it through,” said Adams, who is transgender and began advocating at the Capitol in 2019. They described that year as the dawn of a series of attacks on transgender rights.

Utah’s overwhelmingly Republican Legislature followed Idaho in banning transgender girls from competing in girls’ school sports in 2022. Since then, lawmakers have gone on to prohibit hormone therapy for minors, enacted a bathroom ban in government buildings, and blocked students at the state’s public colleges from living in gender-segregated dorms corresponding with their identity, basing the requirement on sex assigned at birth.

Lawmakers contend the moves are necessary to preserve fairness in athletics, protect young people from medical decisions with irreversible effects and respect the wishes of those who don’t want to live with trans people.

“It sucks in that they continue to just platform this public debate at the state Capitol over whether or not trans people exist, or should exist, or should be allowed to exist,” Adams said Friday.

Headed to the governor’s desk is HB404, a carveout in state antidiscrimination law allowing private landlords to reject transgender renters from shared all-women’s or all-men’s housing consistent with their gender identity.

Supporters of the bill said it would accommodate people who don’t want to share a bathroom or bedroom with transgender renters in off-campus student housing. Opponents said it would make it even harder for an already vulnerable group to find a good place to live in a housing crunch.

In 2023, lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for minors who weren’t already receiving it. A small group of young people who were already receiving treatment at the time had been allowed to continue, but a new bill would require doctors to start tapering off hormone therapy and puberty blockers for those younger than 16 when it takes effect and fully end the treatment within a year. HB174 received final passage from the Legislature Monday morning and now goes to Gov. Spencer Cox.

A state review of studies ordered by the Legislature on gender-affirming treatments for youth linked them to positive effects on mental health and well-being. However, Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz told Utah News Dispatch in January that he sees it as a matter of common sense.

“Kids shouldn’t be taking hormone blockers, puberty blockers,” said Schultz, R-Hooper. “It shouldn’t happen.”

Lawmakers have rejected or significantly pared down other bills. A measure banning taxpayer-funded insurance from covering gender-affirming health care at any age stalled in a Senate committee after Republican lawmakers said it could end up costing taxpayers more and infringing on the rights of adults to make their own medical choices.

Another bill is advancing to the Senate after it was stripped of wide-ranging provisions that would have removed protections based on gender identity from Utah’s hate crimes law, among several others. The bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, handed it off to Rep. Mark Strong, R-Bluffdale, in a move Lee said would help it move more quickly to a vote on the House floor.

The new version of the measure, HB183, swaps out the word “gender” and replaces it with “sex” several times in state law. Lee and other proponents say Utah law doesn’t define gender and the move is needed for the sake of clarity.

On Monday, Lee shot down criticism that the legislation unfairly targets a small group, saying transgender Utahns, although a fraction of the population, “want us to all conform to them and their desires and their needs.”

Demonstrators rally in support of transgender Utahns at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (Will Ruzanski/Utah News Dispatch)

Several transgender Utahns counter that it would allow their identities to be erased.

“This is my community and we are not a threat to you,” Brynn Miksell told a House judiciary committee last week. “We just want to live our lives.”

Afterward, a tear rolled down Kree Arias’ face as he talked about how the committee, rushing to wrap up the meeting, limited public comment from those the measure would directly affect to just 30 seconds per person.

Arias’ spirits lifted a little when he talked with advocates and picked out a bag of trail mix and some jerky from a big cardboard box that featured a hand-drawn heart. But he doesn’t see his message getting through to most lawmakers and said he’s exhausted from trying and failing to reach them.

“We just ask that you respect us as human beings,” Arias said. “We deserve the same rights as everybody else.”

The 2026 Legislature adjourns on Friday.