Utah Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto on Women’s-Sports Bill

T he Utah legislature quickly overrode Governor Spencer Cox’s veto of a ban on biological males in women’s sports on Friday afternoon, mustering the necessary two-thirds majority in both chambers.

The law, HB 11, prohibits “a student of the male sex from competing against another school on a team designated for female students,” and defines “sex” as “the biological, physical condition of being male or female, determined by an individual’s genetics and anatomy at birth.” Following the legislature’s override, which was backed by a margin of 56 to 18 in the house and 21 to eight in the senate, it is scheduled to go into effect on July 1.

The two chambers took less than 30 minutes total to vote to override.

The override comes just days after the governor’s veto on Tuesday. Cox, a Republican, had previously signaled his support for “a commission of political appointees” that “would create criteria and evaluate transgender student-athletes’ physical characteristics and how they compare to ‘baseline ranges’ for their age and gender” to “determine which transgender athletes can participate in all ‘gender-designated’ youth sports,” the Associated Press reported in February. But when the legislature passed an outright ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports across Utah’s public-education system, Cox publicly vowed to veto the bill. “We care deeply about Utah’s female athletes and our LGBTQ+ community,” he wrote in a March 5 Facebook post. “To those hurting tonight: It’s going to be OK. We’re going to help you get through this. Please reach out if you need help.”

The rhetoric was consistent with the first-term governor’s surprisingly liberal record on LGBT issues. In 2019, Cox — then Utah’s lieutenant governor — tearfully apologized to LGBT activists for the collapse of a proposed ban on conversion therapy. In early 2021, Cox came out in support of the Fairness For All Act, a Republican bill in the U.S. House that has been the subject of fierce social-conservative criticism for its attempt to write sexual orientation and gender identity into federal civil-rights law. Around the same time, he threatened to veto a proposed ban on gender-transition surgeries for minors, saying “we have to be really careful any time government gets in between doctors and families and patients.” (That bill, HB 92, stalled out in the state legislature before reaching Cox’s desk.)

The governor has been open about working closely with LGBT activist groups during negotiations over transgender legislation in his state. Last year, the executive director of Equality Utah, a state-based LGBT advocacy group, praised the Republican as “a true champion for LGBTQ youth.” When the ban on transgender athletes was initially floated in February 2021, Cox expressed concerns, echoing the activist line that transgender “kids are just trying to stay alive” while neglecting to cite any substantive evidence that the legislation would put transgender children’s lives in danger.

That approach has led to an increasingly icy relationship with social conservatives. “Spencer Cox is no friend to conservatives and never has been,” Jon Schweppe, the director of policy and government affairs for the social-conservative American Principles Project, told National Review. “This guy has supported the transgender agenda every step of the way — he even puts pronouns in his social-media bio!” (As of this writing, Cox appears to have removed his pronouns from his Instagram page, which had listed his gender identity as “he/him” earlier this week.)

Throughout this process, Cox has argued that he wants to broker a “compromise” between LGBT activists and social conservatives. But the Utah legislature’s override of the governor’s veto is indicative of frustration among many state Republicans. “I worked all session long on another version of [the women’s sports bill] per the governor’s request,” state representative Kera Birkeland, the sponsor of the bill, told National Review. “He said, ‘Come up with a compromise.’ And I just thought and worked long and hard to try to come up with a compromise. But it seemed like every time we thought we had a solution, the opposing side — Equality Utah and ACLU — they all of a sudden didn’t agree with it anymore. And they opposed it every opportunity they had. So ultimately, we just decided that . . . we should just go back to what’s best and what’s right and stand for girls.”

Birkeland and her colleagues in the legislature were prepared for Cox’s effort to kill HB 11. In a joint statement released after the veto was announced, Utah senate president J. Stuart Adams and Utah house speaker Brad Wilson announced that “the President and Speaker conducted a poll of their respective members, and two-thirds of the members of each chamber were in favor of reconvening for a veto override session.”

Cox, for his part, seemed to expect the override. “It is my understanding that you have polled your members and that you have the sufficient two-thirds majority to override a veto,” he wrote in a lengthy statement explaining his Tuesday veto. But he insisted that the issue was not over, citing the potential for excessive litigation against the state: “Should this occur, I will immediately call a special session to change this section of the bill in order to avoid bankrupting our athletic association and local schools. A simple veto override will not resolve this fundamental issue.”

Concerns about financial consequences from lawsuits have been cited by the Republican governors who have killed similar women’s-sports legislation over the course of the past year. When South Dakota’s Kristi Noem vetoed an analogous bill in March 2021, she argued that the law would be a “trial lawyer’s dream,” thrusting her state into “a fight we can’t win.” On Monday, Indiana’s Eric Holcomb offered a similar justification for his veto of a comparable proposal, pointing to “the likelihood of litigation against our schools with the courts having to adjudicate the uncertainties.”

As of this writing, a total of eleven state legislatures have passed bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports. None appear to have been adversely affected by excessive litigation.