The Hill Is Alive (With the Sound of Bad Ideas)

It’s the first day of the 2026 Legislative Session and here’s what is on the agenda.

Before we get into it, here’s a reminder of how to follow along this session:

• See our full session guide resource before doing anything

• Bookmark elevateutah.news for bill explainers, trackers, and action alerts

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• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

• Check the bill tracker for what we support, oppose, and are deeply concerned about

• Come to Hill Talk Wednesdays at Church & State (6–7:30 PM) for live breakdowns + partner orgs

• Email us at hillyeah@elevateutah.news when something looks… suspicious

• Subscribe here for weekly recaps (paid subscribers get a gold star)

Lawmakers are back in their suits, lobbyists are already looking for parking, and Todd Weiler’s wife is once again (as she has since 2018) laying out his outfits like it’s the first day of school. Can’t dress himself but we let him make laws. Makes sense.

If you’re hoping this legislative session will be about solving Utah’s actual problems like housing, water, education, and healthcare, you may want to brace yourself.

The 2026 Utah Legislature is shaping up to be less about governing and, once again, more about asserting control: over cities, over bodies, over speech, over movement, over schools, over courts, over what counts as “acceptable” identity, and even over who gets to participate in every day life.

This session continues a pattern we’ve seen accelerate over the last few years: a Republican supermajority that no longer governs like it believes consequences exist. Instead of responding to voter concerns, it increasingly legislates against imagined threats – often imported from national right-wing media ecosystems – and uses state power to punish or preempt anyone who doesn’t fall in line.

Below is a preview of the major concerning bills we’ll be tracking this session. But don’t you worry, this is just the beginning. This email might send you into a deep spiral, but we couldn’t fit all the bills here so we will be updating you about some of the good legislation in future emails.

1. Judicial Independence on the Chopping Block

After repeated losses in court, the Legislature is continuing on its warpath against judicial independence.

SB134 (Appellate Court Amendments - Sen. Chris Wilson) would expand the Utah Supreme Court from five to seven justices and the Court of Appeals from seven to nine judges. Legislative leadership is pitching this as a neutral, administrative fix, citing workload concerns and pointing out that some similarly sized states have larger appellate courts.

Court expansion, on its own, isn’t inherently illegitimate. But context matters. And in this case, the timing, structure, and scope of this bill raise serious red flags.

Judicial leadership has been clear about where the real pressure points are: understaffed trial and juvenile courts, insufficient numbers of law clerks, strained court administration, and a lack of resources for domestic violence cases. Those investments would actually improve access to justice for everyday Utahns. Expanding the appellate courts does not address those needs.

Structural changes to the judiciary should be driven by judicial expertise and long-term planning instead of political frustration with recent court decisions. Taken alongside other bills aimed at weakening judicial independence, SB143 looks less like capacity-building and more like an attempt to reshape the courts to be more compliant.

HJR5 (Judicial Nominations Amendment - Rep: Jason Kyle) proposes a constitutional amendment that allows the governor to ignore the judicial nominating commission entirely, removes deadlines for appointments, and strips the chief justice of the authority to fill vacancies if the governor fails to act.

If passed and approved by voters in November, this would consolidate decisive control over judicial appointments in the governor’s office and allow seats to remain vacant indefinitely if the governor doesn’t like the options.

HB262 (Judicial Election Amendments) is another hit by Representative Jason Kyle. One he proposed last year and is bringing back from the dead. This completes the loop by raising the judicial retention threshold from a simple majority to 67%. That turns retention elections from performance reviews into political loyalty tests, making judges more vulnerable to partisan attacks and pressure.

Taken together, these bills build on the already damaged system:

• Control who gets on the bench

• Control when seats are filled

• Control how easily judges can be removed

2. The Legislature vs. Local Control (Guess Who’s Winning?)

One of the clearest through lines this year is already the Legislature’s growing willingness to override cities, counties, and local decision-makers outright.

The most blatant example is HB196 (Highway Designation Amendments). On its face, it changes how roads can be named. In practice, it does something much bigger and much more nefarious: it allows the Legislature to rename city-owned streets, forces cities and businesses to comply, and strips them of the ability to use alternative names. And then, THEN, it immediately uses that power to rename Salt Lake City’s “Harvey Milk Boulevard” as “Charlie Kirk Boulevard.”

This bill, being run by Trevor Lee, is not only offensive but also incredibly ironic. If we were to make a supercut of every legislator solemnly invoking “local control,” we would be here for three days. But instead of that, we’ll let the team at Equality Utah do the talking:

“Trevor Lee has an unusual and truly bizarre obsession with the LGBT community. And it’s so curious that he wants to memorialize Charlie Kirk on the absolute gayest street in Utah.

“The people of Salt Lake City know the difference between meaningful leadership and culture-war cosplay. Harvey Milk earned his place in history. Trevor Lee, despite his yearning for our attention, isn’t destined for the history books. Frankly, he couldn’t even land his name on a cul-de-sac.”

HB196 isn’t about honoring anyone. It’s about establishing that the Legislature can reach directly into city infrastructure and make symbolic, ideological statements without local consent from the people who actually live there. Local control, but only when it’s to their benefit.

If you think cities should get to decide what their streets are called, Equality Utah has a petition you can sign here.

The Legislature has spent the last few sessions targeting Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, curiously Utah’s largest and most liberal strongholds. While we haven’t seen direct retaliation for the Salt Lake City Pride flags yet, there are several other local-control bills worth watching:

• SB108 – Online Marketplace Amendments (Sen. Lincoln Fillmore) Cities and counties would be barred from regulating online marketplaces, including short-term rentals like AirBNB and gig platforms.

• HB239 – Local Land Use Amendments (Rep. Jordan Teuscher) Creates a state-authorized commission for planning unincorporated areas in counties of the first class (aka only Salt Lake County) that can steer annexation, block incorporation efforts, and limit local choice.

• HB212 – County Formation Amendments (Rep. Jordan Teuscher) Opens the door to breaking up Salt Lake County, reshaping services, taxes, and political power under the banner of “local control.”

• HB236 – Truth in Taxation Amendments (Rep. Karen Peterson) Tightens the process for raising property taxes, making it harder for local governments to respond to real costs and service needs – likely in response to Salt Lake County raising property taxes this year.

3. Voting, Citizenship, and the Redefinition of Democracy

HB209 (Voting Amendments - Rep Corey Maloy) changes who voting is realistically accessible to in Utah.

This bill creates a two-tier voting system. Voters who provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship receive a full ballot and can vote in federal, state, and local elections. Voters who do not provide that proof can still register and vote, but only in federal races.

That structure alone will push people out of the process.

For many voters – particularly naturalized citizens, immigrants, elderly voters, people with limited English proficiency, and anyone unfamiliar with election bureaucracy – the message is simple: this may be complicated, risky, and not worth the trouble. When voting becomes conditional and paperwork-heavy, participation drops. This is a well-documented phenomenon.

HB209 also gives election officials new authority to independently review voter rolls and flag voters as “not a citizen” using databases like SAVE and other government records. If you’re flagged, the burden is entirely on you to fix it. Fail to respond in time, and you can be removed from the rolls or forced into provisional voting that won’t count unless you provide proof of citizenship within ten days.

Systems like SAVE are known to be error-prone and slow, especially for naturalized citizens and people whose records don’t perfectly match across agencies. Under HB209, even a mistake by the state can cost someone their vote.

This is where the discrimination becomes obvious. HB209 formalizes a system where some voters move through elections untouched, while others are flagged, scrutinized, and required to repeatedly justify their right to participate.

HB209 doesn’t need to explicitly ban anyone from voting to be effective. It just needs to make voting harder, riskier, and more confusing for the “wrong” people. And in a state where we see nearly zero voter fraud issues every year, the message this sends is perfectly clear to anyone paying attention.

A few other voting and democracy bills to keep in mind:

• HB256 (School District Elections Amendments - Rep. Jason Kyle) would make school board elections partisan, forcing candidates to run with party labels, go through party primaries, and tie midterm vacancies to party affiliation. The result is a system where local school governance becomes a permanent culture-war battleground.

• HB25 (Candidate Petition Amendments - Rep. Lisa Shepherd) changes the candidate nominating petition process by requiring candidates to submit signatures to each voter’s county clerk for verification (instead of one central filing officer), with county clerks certifying totals back to the Lieutenant Governor for multi-county races. It also moves up the signature submission deadline for signature-gathering candidates seeking a qualified political party nomination, from 14 days to 21 days before convention.

4. Legislating Identity Out of Existence

Utah lawmakers are continuing their years-long effort to redefine gender, identity, and family relationships through statute, regardless of medical consensus or lived reality.

HB183 (Sex Designation Amendments - of course, Rep. Trevor Lee) replaces the word “gender” with “sex” throughout Utah law, strips protections tied to gender identity in housing, employment, and crime, severely limits changes to birth certificates, and hardens sex-based rules in schools.

It also includes a particularly alarming provision: schools and some childcare or healthcare providers may not assign an employee who “presents” as a different sex to have face-to-face contact with a child for more than five minutes. This provision is insulting, disgusting, state-sanctioned bigotry.

In custody cases, the bill goes even further, allowing courts to treat a parent’s refusal to support a child’s gender identity as a point in their favor.

This is about using law to enforce conformity and punishing families and individuals who don’t comply with one narrow worldview.

That same impulse shows up in HB114 (Adult-Oriented Performances and Materials Amendments - Rep. Colin Jack), often framed as a “drag show ban.” This bill caught some attention last year but did not make it very far in the Legislative process. It is clearly a priority for Rep. Colin Jack who is bringing back the bill to reshuffle criminal statutes to create new crimes around vaguely defined “pornographic” or “harmful to minors” performances, it also lowers intent standards to include recklessness, and ramps up penalties.

We will also be watching HB95 (Public Employee Gender-specific Language Requirements) from Rep. Nicholeen Peck which protects public employees (including school staff) from being disciplined for using gendered language like names/pronouns based on someone’s birth sex, the parent’s preference, or the employee’s religious/moral belief – AKA public employees have free reign to deadname children, coworkers, bosses, patrons, anyone. Peck ran this bill last year and thankfully, it didn’t make it out of Senate committee, but it got too close to passing for comfort.

5. The State Policing Bodies (Literally and Financially)

Some of the most aggressive bills this session don’t criminalize people outright. They do something quieter and often more effective: they use funding, coverage, and eligibility rules to make certain kinds of healthcare harder or impossible to access.

HB232 (Medicaid Abortion Payment Amendments) from Rep. Nicholeen Peck, would prohibit certain abortion providers, specifically Planned Parenthood, from qualifying as Medicaid providers at all.

While the intent is clearly about abortion services, it would have far reaching consequences by cutting off Medicaid reimbursement for cancer screenings, STI testing, contraception, and general reproductive healthcare for low-income Utahns who rely on those providers. The effect is predictable and intentional: fewer providers, fewer options, and more barriers—especially for people with the least flexibility, time, or money to navigate around them.

That same strategy shows up again in bills targeting trans healthcare.

• HB193 (Transgender Medical Procedures Amendments - Rep. Nicholeen Peck, again) bans any state or local government entity from using public funds to pay for or reimburse gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and surgeries. This applies broadly to public insurance and publicly funded health programs.

• HB174 (Sex Characteristic Change Treatment Amendments - Rep. Rex Shipp) goes further by strengthening Utah’s existing ban on gender-affirming care for minors. It eliminates earlier carve-outs, forces most youth currently receiving care to taper off treatment within months, and removes the requirement that the state continue reviewing medical evidence. It turns what was framed as a temporary pause into a settled political decision, regardless of medical consensus or individual circumstances.

These bills weaponize access. By controlling who qualifies, what gets covered, and which providers can operate, the state effectively decides whose bodies are worth supporting and whose care is considered optional or unacceptable.

6. Selective Autonomy and Misinformation

Several bills this session weaken public health systems under the banner of “choice,” while quietly removing the guardrails designed to slow misinformation.

Trevor Lee is at it again with HB152 (Educational Vaccine Exemption Amendments). It eliminates the requirement that parents complete an education module or consult with a provider before obtaining a school vaccine exemption. The exemption process remains, but the “pause and learn” step is gone. Parents can now opt out without ever encountering evidence-based information.

And to continue Utah’s legacy of passing legislation right off of RFK Jr.’s vision board:

• HB96 (Ivermectin Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee), which allows pharmacists to dispense ivermectin without a patient-specific prescription and shields prescribers from liability. Trevor Lee, a real expert in evidence-based policy making, remains deeply committed to solving problems Utah does not have.

• HB179 (Milk Amendments - Rep. Kristen Chevrier), which expands and protects Utah’s raw milk market by loosening state oversight for an extremely dangerous industry.

• HB283 (Raw Milk Amendments - Rep. Mike Kohler) makes it easier to sell and distribute raw milk, while limiting how and where the state can intervene. It creates a new regulatory structure that legitimizes and stabilizes that expanded market, while shifting risk to consumers and post-incident enforcement.

  • Together, these two bills move Utah decisively toward a choice-first, consequence-later approach to raw milk where access is expanded, oversight is constrained, and public health intervention largely happens only after something goes wrong.

• HB156 (Blood Transfusion Amendments - Rep. Kristen Chevrier), our so-named “BYOB: bring your own blood” has been resuscitated after dying a bloody death last session. Rep Kristen Chevrier is committed to forcing hospitals to accommodate “directed blood” transfusions and limiting liability, and tapping into growing misinformation about “blood purity” and vaccination status.

7. Immigration, Surveillance, and Economic Punishment

Several bills this session target undocumented Utahns and mixed-status families through administrative and financial pressure.

HB88 (Public Assistance Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee) tightens proof-of-legal-status requirements, narrows existing exceptions, increases penalties for errors, and mandates reporting when someone is found ineligible. The practical effect is predictable: people who are legally eligible for benefits may avoid applying out of fear.

HB141 (International Money Transmission Amendments - Rep. Stephanie Gricius) adds a 2% tax on money sent out of the country unless the sender provides specific forms of ID. Utah Driving Privilege Cards don’t count. For all intents and purposes, this is a tax on immigrants sending money to friends or family outside of the U.S.

Speaking of driving privilege cards, HB287 (Immigrant Driving Amendments - Rep. Trevor Lee) repeals Utah’s driving privilege card program entirely and prohibits the Driver License Division from issuing new driving privilege cards. It removes a legal pathway for undocumented Utahns to drive, be insured, and comply with traffic laws. The bill also requires law enforcement to report individuals who are unlawfully present in the United States to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they are involved in a motor vehicle accident.

These changes turn routine driving – or even being hit by another car – into an immigration enforcement event. They also make Utah roads less safe by pushing more drivers into uninsured, unlicensed status and discouraging people from calling for help after accidents.

Let’s be super clear about what these bills do: they make everyday life more expensive and risky for specific communities.

8. Turning Schools into Political Infrastructure

Of course, public schools remain a central battlefield, as always. Several bills this session shift schools away from local decision-making and professional judgment and toward centralized control, legal risk, and ideological enforcement.

HB197 (School Materials Amendments - Rep. Nicholeen Peck) dramatically expands Utah’s “sensitive materials” regime. It requires schools to use filters and automated tools to block content, immediately pulls materials upon a “plausible” complaint, and creates a statewide removal trigger once enough districts flag the same material. A single dispute can ripple outward, forcing removals everywhere—regardless of local context (see previous local control section), age appropriateness, or educational value. The bill also opens the door for parents to sue schools and vendors, turning classrooms into legal liabilities.

SB119 (School and Classroom Amendments - Sen. Lincoln Fillmore) pushes state authority even deeper into everyday school operations. It imposes a “personal care independence” requirement before a child can enroll in public school, with limited exemptions, potentially delaying access for young children and families with fewer resources. The bill also directs the state to create Utah-owned curriculum materials aligned with state priorities, centralizing control over what gets taught, even if adoption is technically optional.

But the most effective way the Legislature attacks public education is the oldest one there is: funding. Behind the culture-war bills and classroom micromanagement is a blunt fiscal reality. This session, lawmakers are pushing a sweeping budget cut, ordering every committee to reduce spending by 5%, a total of $295.8 million in education funding alone.

Proposed reductions include funding for school social workers, child sexual abuse prevention, schools for the deaf and blind, arts education, and a long list of services that help students who need more than a textbook and a test.

These cuts will move first through the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, then land in Executive Appropriations later in the session.

As a reminder, Utah already ranks last in the nation in per-pupil education funding. There is no excess. There is no cushion. Every cut means fewer adults in buildings, fewer supports for students, and fewer opportunities, especially for kids who rely most on public schools to be stable, safe places.

So while lawmakers argue about books, bathrooms, and buzzwords, the real damage happens quietly, in spreadsheets and subcommittee rooms where public education is starved, then blamed for struggling.

If You Made It This Far

Congratulations. That was grueling to write and somehow even worse to experience in real life. And don’t worry, we’re confident there’s plenty more where this came from.

There will be good bills this session. There always are. We’ll flag them, celebrate them, and bring some actual oxygen into your inbox when lawmakers do something genuinely helpful. This isn’t a doom-only operation.

But here’s the reminder we can’t skip: we have to keep paying attention.

Legislative sessions depend on exhaustion, on people tuning out, on the assumption that no one has the time, energy, or patience to track what’s happening once the headlines fade. That’s when the worst stuff moves the fastest.

You don’t have to watch everything. You don’t have to read every bill. You don’t have to become a Capitol regular. But staying plugged in by showing up when it matters, sharing information, backing organizations doing the work changes outcomes more than people realize.

We’ll keep doing the tracking and attempt to keep translating the chaos. You keep an eye on what affects you, your community, and the people you care about.

45 days begins today. We’ve got you.