Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz (R) says his Republican majority intends to permanently ban gender-affirming care for minors this year. The move comes more than seven months after the release of a Utah Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) report, mandated by a Republican-backed state law, which found that medical evidence actually supports access to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, a different result than many conservatives were hoping for.

Utah already has what former state Rep. Mike Kennedy (R) — who now represents the state’s third district in Congress — described to Deseret News as a “permanent” ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Passed in January 2023, S.B. 16 banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors — despite such surgeries being exceptionally rare — and instituted an indefinite moratorium on providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to minors for the purposes of gender-affirming care.

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Kennedy, who co-sponsored S.B. 16, admitted to Deseret News that characterizing the law’s ban on puberty blockers and HRT as a “moratorium” was essentially a tactic to win over lawmakers who wanted more data on the effects of such treatments. The ban, he said, is already effectively permanent unless Utah lawmakers act to lift it.

S.B. 16 also ordered the state DHHS to commission a review of medical evidence around puberty blockers and HRT prescribed for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, with the goal of lawmakers using the report’s findings to inform future policy decisions.

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That review, conducted by the University of Utah’s Drug Regimen Center, was released last May, and as Mother Jones reported at the time, its conclusions “unambiguously” supported the benefits of gender-affirming care for trans young people.

However, Utah Republicans, including Schultz, Kennedy, and state Rep. Katy Hall — who co-sponsored S.B. 16 — have dismissed the report.

“Common sense is common sense,” Schultz told Deseret News. “I don’t need a report, one way or the other, to tell me that. I just firmly believe that minors should not be transitioning.”

At the same time, however, Schultz told the outlet that he agrees with a separate review of the DHHS report by anti-trans advocacy group Do No Harm. The group’s review, published early last month, claims that the DHHS report does not meet the standards of a true systematic review of medical evidence, according to Deseret News.

“Unlike true systematic reviews, it does not assess the reliability of studies and whether the research can provide guidance for weighing the risks and benefits of medical intervention for children with gender dysphoria,” Do No Harm’s report claims.

Deseret News — which is owned, through a subsidiary, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — also notes that the Utah DHHS review’s findings contradict those in both the Cass Review and one released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year. Both of those reviews have been widely criticized.

A spokesperson for University of Utah Health defended the Utah DHHS review, telling Deseret News in a statement that it was based on “an extensive body of research regarding the safety and efficacy of these treatments.”

“Our review also found that the consensus of that evidence is that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, and metabolic changes; and they are effective in terms of positive mental health and psychosocial outcomes,” the statement read, according to Deseret News.

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