Utah Gov. Cox signed HB269 restricting transgender access to sex-designated spaces and college housing

On February 14, 2025, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed House Bill 269, "Privacy Protections in Sex-designated Areas," into law. The measure tightened birth-sex restrictions on access to sex-designated privacy spaces across Utah's education and government facilities. Its central provisions require degree-granting institutions to assign students to sex-designated student housing according to their sex designation, narrow the exception that had allowed sex-based distinctions in interscholastic activities to a limited eligibility-commission determination, and remove a medical-treatment documentation route that had supported a person's access to certain sex-designated spaces.

Chief sponsor Rep. Stephanie Gricius carried the bill through the 2025 General Session, where it passed the House 59-14 and the Senate 22-7 before reaching the governor's desk. The law builds on Utah's earlier bathroom-restriction statute and further limits transgender people's ability to use facilities and housing that match their gender identity. Opponents, including the ACLU of Utah, argued that it forces public colleges to assign dormitory housing without regard to a student's gender identity and, because gender-neutral or single-occupant housing does not exist at every Utah campus, could exclude transgender students from campus housing altogether.

By writing birth-sex assignment into the rules governing student housing and shared facilities, and by stripping out the documentation pathway that had provided an alternative, the law placed ordinary shared spaces out of reach for transgender Utahns on the basis of gender identity. It formed part of a broader slate of anti- transgender measures enacted in Utah during the 2025 session.