Editor’s Note: The 2024 General Legislature remains in session until March1. This FAQ will be updated as we learn more.
During the 2024 Legislature, lawmakers adopted HB 257, “Sex-based Designations for Privacy, Anti-bullying and Women’s Opportunities,” restricting which “changing rooms” Trans people can use in public buildings, including on the University of Utah campus. A changing room is a space designated for multiple individuals to dress or undress in the same space, such as a dressing room, fitting room, locker room, or shower room. It does not include a restroom unless the restroom is within or attached to a changing room.
The prohibitions went into effect with Gov. Spencer Cox’s signature on Jan. 30, but the enforcement provisions do not take effect until May 1, 2024.
While most of the law’s guidelines and restrictions apply to K-12 public schools, it still will likely impact changing room use on the university’s campus.
Below are some frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions
All individuals may continue to use the restroom of their choice, regardless of their gender identity, unless the restroom is within or attached to a changing room. If a restroom is within or attached to a changing room, the changing room prohibitions (see below) also apply to the restroom.
It is not unlawful for someone to use a sex-designated restroom that aligns with their gender identity different from their sex assigned at birth unless the restroom is within or attached to a changing room. Certain conduct by anyone using a restroom is impermissible, including engaging in lewd behavior, voyeurism, and loitering. This was the law prior to HB 257 and continues to be the law.
Currently, more than 80 all-gender restrooms are available for use across our campus. Most of these inclusive restrooms are single-stall restrooms, complete with a sink, hand-dryer and locking door. Many include changing tables for infants and toddlers. You can find them on the campus map:
Click on the three-line menu next to the “U” logo, selecting the dropdown menu for “accessibility and safety.” Then select the button for “all-gender restrooms.” Clicking on an individual restroom icon will open a window that provides directions to its precise location in a campus building.
In addition to multiple single-stall, accessible restrooms in buildings across campus, the university has two multi-stall, all-gender restrooms—one on the first floor of Marriott Library, next to the café; another on the third floor of the Union Building, next to the Veterans Services office.
The Eccles Student Life Center has two all-inclusive single shower restrooms next to the first-floor sex-designated locker rooms. These are available for all members of the Eccles Student Life Center to use.
HB 257 requires Trans people to use the locker room or other changing room that matches their sex as assigned at birth, unless they have both:
- Changed the gender on their birth certificate.
- Undergone a primary sex characteristic surgical procedure (bottom surgery).
Those who have not amended their birth certificates or undergone surgery may still use all-gender restrooms and single-stall shower rooms available in campus buildings.
HB 257 permits those who are assisting a minor/dependent child or a dependent adult, caring for a patient, or performing maintenance or cleaning to be in changing rooms that do not align with their sex as assigned at birth.
HRE allows students in on-campus housing to select if they want a male, female or gender-inclusive room. Campus housing does not have shared multi-user spaces (like a common multi-stall dorm hallway bathroom); all restroom spaces are single gender and match the gender of those assigned to the rooms or apartments. In the case of clusters (Kahlert Village), pods (Lassonde) or end-cap units (Epicenter), bathrooms are designed for single users and people of any gender can enter.
HRE staff work day-to-day with students who have concerns and offer robust mediation and triage processes.
Trans people who use sex-designated changing rooms or showers different from their sex as assigned at birth, and who have not amended their birth certificates and undergone bottom surgery, could face criminal penalties. The law allows for those who violate its provisions to be charged with criminal trespass. The penalty may be enhanced if the individual is also found to have engaged in lewdness, voyeurism or loitering. You should know that HB 257 defines lewd behavior to include exposing genitals (which can happen as a matter of course in the process of changing) and it defines loitering to include intentionally or knowingly remaining in the changing room.
University leaders will do everything possible to accommodate cis-gender, transgender, non-binary, gender-non-conforming and other individuals’ needs on campus—including providing access to personal lockers and single-stall showers outside of sex-designated locker rooms in the Student Life Center and other athletic buildings.
Reach out to on-site managers to request accommodations.
Many older buildings on campus do not have any all-gender restrooms, including Libby Gardner Hall and others on President’s Circle and in Fort Douglas.
The Inclusive Restroom Committee was established in 2018 with 12 members representing a broad cross-section of campus. The committee provides advice to University Facilities Management in discussions of future building and remodeling projects.
In 2022, the committee adopted “Inclusive Restroom Design Standards.” The standards, which are non-binding design recommendations, encourage facilities managers to design new and renovated multi-stall restrooms so that they can easily be converted to all-gender restrooms in the future.
The University of Utah follows state building code guidance in every campus planning and building design and construction project. During the 2023 Legislature, lawmakers adopted a new version of the state building code which includes requirements for restroom designs and allows up to 50% of the fixtures in a state building to be in multi-stall, all-gender restrooms. Following this code adoption, the State Division of Facilities Construction and Management (DFCM) issued a new design requirement for state buildings allowing no more than one all-gender, multi-stall restroom per building, to be located on a main, public floor.
The university collaborates with the State Division of Facilities Construction and Management (DFCM) on the design of restrooms in all new buildings to prepare plans for restrooms. Including the Price Computing Building, current plans call for one, multi-stall, all-gender-ready restroom on the first floor of the building. Floors 2 through 5 will have gendered, multi-stall restrooms. All floors include a single-stall family restroom, that is all-gender.
The new Applied Sciences Building will include an all-gender-ready restroom on the main lobby level (entry from University Street) when it opens in fall 2024. As with Price Computing, it will be capable of opening with separate men’s and women’s restrooms, sections, and will have a center partition that could ultimately be removed to create one, large, all-gender restroom, like those in Marriott Library and the Union Building. As with all future university buildings, every floor of the Applied Sciences Building also will have a single-stall, all-gender accessible/family restroom.