Utah Republicans, ignoring their own study, pass ban on gender-affirming care for youth

Utah Republicans have passed three separate bills restricting gender-affirming care for youth, ignoring research they commissioned which concluded the treatment is safe and beneficial.

The state House of Representatives passed H.B. 174 on Thursday in a 54-16 vote, which would ban hormone therapy for those under age 18, requiring doctors of those currently receiving care to stop writing prescriptions by Jan. 28, 2027. It makes permanent the state's 2023 moratorium, which was enacted pending the results of a study by the University of Utah’s Drug Regimen Review Center.

Related: Utah Republicans ignore study supporting gender-affirming care for trans youth. It's research they demanded

The House also passed H.B. 193, which would prevent insurance through state employers from covering gender-affirming care, and H.B. 258, which would require private insurers to cover de-transition treatment.

While Gov. Spencer Cox and other Republicans claimed when enacting the moratorium that gender-affirming care is "experimental" and that they needed more evidence to move forward, their own report — over 1,000 pages in length — found over 230 primary studies involving 28,056 trans youth.

The report unequivocally concluded that gender-affirming care leads to better mental health and lower suicide risk among transgender minors, with researchers noting that the evidence available is "far exceeding" that usually required for high-risk pediatric treatments to receive FDA approval.

"The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data on the use of [gender-affirming hormone therapy] in pediatric patients," the report states. "The body of evidence we have uncovered exceeds the amount of evidence that often serves as the basis of FDA approval for many high-risk, new drugs approved in pediatric populations in the U.S."

The Utah Department of Health and Human Services quietly posted the report on its website in May, with Cox's office refusing to comment public. State Rep. Mike Kennedy, the bill’s lead sponsor and a physician, also declined to comment.

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The three bills now head to the Utah Senate. The American Civil Liberties of Utah said in a post to social media that the laws not only threaten the well-being of children, but are an "attack on gender-affirming care for adults"

"Allowing the state to continue to encroach on transgender people’s right to care based on politics and ignorance will open the door to further intrusions into your health care and those you care about," the group wrote.