SALT LAKE CITY — Teachers in Utah will have the freedom to display LGBTQ+ Pride flags and other social, political or religious images after the state House on Monday blocked a bill that would have banned teachers from using their position to promote or discredit certain beliefs.
The Republican-led chamber rejected the proposal on a 39-32 vote as they rushed to deal with hundreds of outstanding bills in the final week of the 2024 legislative session. Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the bill’s vague language and warned it could hinder important lessons in critical thinking.
Under the bill, teachers would have been prohibited from encouraging a student to reconsider their sexual orientation or gender, and could have faced penalties for confirming or refusing to confirm a student’s identity. Challenging a student’s political views or religious beliefs, even within the context of an educational exercise, could also have left a teacher vulnerable to a lawsuit.
Some teachers implored lawmakers earlier this month to reject the bill because it would make them afraid to speak openly in class. But Rep. Jeff Stenquist, a Draper Republican and the bill’s lead sponsor, encouraged educators to view it as a tool to increase confidence in the state’s education system.
While teachers should be more careful to filter out their personal beliefs, he said they would have a new tool to ease parents’ concerns about what their children are learning in Utah schools.
“Unfortunately, there is a perception that our students are being pushed toward certain ideologies or religious viewpoints or whatever,” Stenquist said Monday. “And this bill now gives us the opportunity to definitively say to parents, ‘No. We don’t allow that in the state of Utah.'”
The bill’s unexpected failure in the House of Representatives comes a month after Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed legislation limiting diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s educational institutions.
This year, Republican lawmakers in at least 17 states have already introduced dozens of bills to roll back diversity efforts at colleges and some K-12 schools. Several of these states are also pushing to ban classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ topics in elementary grades and prevent teachers from affirming a child’s gender identity or pronouns.
Sara Jones, executive director of the Utah Education Association, expressed concern that a teacher with a family photo on his desk — one of the few personal displays allowed under the law — could still be disciplined if that image shows the spouse of the same sex or when their family was outside a school building. prayer room.
In a legislative body overwhelmingly made up of Latter-day Saints, several had expressed alarm before the vote that the bill could suppress religious expression.
Local LGBTQ+ rights activists and other critics celebrated lawmakers’ choice to scrap the bill, which the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah had labeled a tool for “viewpoint-based censorship.” Utah Republicans have passed other legislation this session, including a transgender bathroom ban, which the ACLU says perpetuates discrimination against transgender people.
Rep. Joel Briscoe, a Salt Lake City Democrat who teaches high school civics and comparative government, worried the bill could prevent him from hanging the flags of other countries or displaying the campaign signs of all candidates running in a state or local race. The policy would have allowed American flags or those of other countries deemed relevant to the curriculum.
He and several lawmakers argued that the proposal did not adequately define what it means to “promote” a faith. A teacher may face pushback from a parent or student who confuses promoting a point of view with simply explaining a controversial topic or challenging a student to defend his argument, he said.
“I didn’t think it was my job as a teacher to ask my students to think a certain way,” Briscoe says. “As a teacher, I believed it was my job to ask my students to think.”