[New] Utah 2023 Legislative Session LGBTQ bills

Five bills before the 2023 Utah Legislative Session that directly affect Utah’s LGBTQ community are related to transgender surgery issues. Two are fairly identical in that they target surgery or hormone treatments on minors. Another requires schools to notify parents if a child wants to use a different name than what’s on their records. A fourth bill would have Utah’s employee health benefits plan cover gender-confirming surgery for adult state workers. A last bill bans minors from changing their birth certificates.

SB16 Transgender Medical Treatments and Procedures

Sen. Michael S. Kennedy drafted a substitute bill to SB16, which would prohibit Utah doctors from performing “sex characteristic surgical procedures” on a minor.

Before the Health and Human Services Interim Committee hearing during the October interim session of the Utah Legislature, Kennedy said it was “with some reluctance that [he] enter into the policy debate regarding the health care of transgender minors.”

He went on to misstate the policies supported by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society, saying the organizations are against sex changes in minors.

He also characterized such surgeries as “weak” and “novel.”

In his new draft, the bill would require the Utah Dept. of Health to study hormonal and transgender treatments, require the Division of Professional Licensing to create a certification for providing “hormonal transgender treatments,” and prohibit health care providers from using hormonal treatments for any new patients, threatening such doctors with a malpractice suit.

Transgender advocate Sue Robbins explains the bill in lay-person terms.

“If you take this to a high level to weed out specifics, the bill allows continuing of existing, ongoing treatment programs for minors but will block new treatment programs. A study will be conducted by Health and Human Services and that will be used for future decisions by the legislature,” she said. “We have seen this malpractice verbiage before and it ultimately makes doctors back away from providing healthcare either to remove risk or due to increased insurance. This is a very dangerous insertion.”