Utah Gov. Cox signed S.B. 174, letting health care providers refuse treatment on religious or moral grounds

On March 25, 2026, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed S.B. 174, the "Exercise of Religious Beliefs and Conscience Amendments," into law. Sponsored by Sen. Keven Stratton (R-Orem), the measure lets health care providers decline to perform treatments or services that conflict with their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs. Providers must notify the Utah Department of Health and Human Services of their objection and post notice of it; the objection attaches to categories of treatment rather than to individual patients, and emergency care is exempt.

The law directs clinics to staff around a provider's objections where feasible and to help direct patients to alternative providers when a facility cannot accommodate a request. Supporters framed it as a protection for conscience in medicine. Critics — including LGBTQ advocates and public-health organizations such as the Utah Public Health Association's Immunization Advocacy Coalition — warned that codifying belief-based refusal could create barriers to care, cautioning that the measure "may unintentionally create barriers to vaccine access for Utah families" and could disproportionately burden LGBTQ patients and those seeking reproductive care.

By enacting belief-based refusal into state law, Utah places the burden of securing non-emergency care on the patient who is turned away rather than on the system that turns them away. The archive records the enactment because it is a government policy that authorizes providers to decline service in ways that public-health and civil-rights groups warn will fall unequally on marginalized patients.