Utah

Utah Bill Would Require Teachers to Be Politically ‘Neutral’ In Class

Published

2 years ago

February 18, 2024

Utah Bill Would Require Teachers to Be Politically ‘Neutral’ In Class

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It started as what critics call a “Don’t Say Gay” bill last year, but has since evolved into broader legislation to control what teachers can and can’t say — or display — in their classrooms.

With HB303, Rep. Jeff Stenquist, R-Draper, wants to ban teachers from “endorsing, promoting or disparaging” certain beliefs or viewpoints, including religious or political beliefs and sexual orientation or gender identity.

Stenquist started working on the bill about a year ago, after some parents expressed concerns about a teacher talking about pronouns and gender identity with young students.

HB303 would restrict teachers from having those discussions unless they’re germane to the curriculum, and would require teachers to tread carefully as to not sway a student to change their beliefs. It would also effectively restrict the display of Pride flags or other symbols that could be interpreted as a “political” or “social” belief unless they’re relevant to the curriculum.

Stenquist said he’s trying to address a “perception problem” with teachers and “get political and ideological fights … out of the classroom.” He said his goal is to “reassure parents that students are not being exposed to some political or ideological ideal that they may not agree with,” regardless of political or social leanings.

But the bill’s opponents — including the Utah Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah — argue it’s too vague and would create a “chilling effect” on teachers, leaving them at risk over what they can or can’t say to their students without punishment.

Despite those concerns, the bill narrowly cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday. It advanced out of the House Education Committee with a split, 6-5 vote. Its next stop: the House floor.

What does the bill do?

HB303 would prohibit school employees or officials from using their position, “through instruction, materials or a display of symbols, images or language” to support, promote or criticize certain beliefs. It also bans them from inviting, suggesting or encouraging students to “reconsider or change” the students’ beliefs.

Those beliefs, as listed in the bill, include:

Religious, denominational, sectarian, agnostic, or atheistic beliefs or viewpoints
Political or social beliefs or viewpoints
Viewpoints regarding sexual orientation or gender identity

The bill would, however, allow teachers to wear religious clothing, including jewelry such as a rosary, or other “accessories that are central to the individual’s sincerely held religious belief.” It would also allow them to display “personal photographs” of their family members.

It would also allow teachers to discuss “an age-appropriate topic” or display an “age-appropriate image or symbol” as long as it’s part of an approved curriculum.

Stenquist said the bill would require Utah school districts to implement a more “standardized policy around neutrality” across the state.

The debate

While drafting the bill, Stenquist worked with Megan Kallas, a parent and one of Stenquist’s constituents, who came to him to prevent “inappropriate conversations” that she said her first grade daughter’s teacher was having with some students outside of curriculum dealing with topics of gender identity, gender fluidity and pronouns.

Frustrated that school and district officials didn’t address the issue because there was no “policy on the books to say this is inappropriate,” Kallas said she turned to Stenquist. Since then, she said he’s crafted a bill to implement a “fair and neutral policy that protects all students and creates in the classroom an environment of learning versus an environment of ideologies being passed around from teacher to student without parental consent.”

Kallas and other supporters told the committee HB303 is aimed at ensuring teacher “professionalism” and fostering a learning environment free from political pressures or ideologies.

But Sara Jones, director of government relations for the Utah Education Association, a union that lobbies on behalf of teachers, urged lawmakers to oppose the bill, expressing concerns about ambiguous language.

For example, Jones noted the bill’s language allows teachers to display personal photographs in their classrooms or offices.

“But can those photographs include a family standing in front of a place of worship, or a family member holding a sign at a rally at the Capitol, or a same-sex couple holding a Pride flag, or would those types of personal photographs actually be interpreted as promoting religious, political (beliefs) or sexual orientation?” she questioned.

Jones also wondered how teachers are supposed to avoid “inviting” a student to change their political viewpoints while teaching topics such as U.S. government or history. “It implies classroom instruction, which includes careful analysis, discussion, deliberation of facts, should never include a student then considering how that information might change their viewpoint or their opinion,” she said.

“Ambiguous language is a hazard for educators who won’t know how the statute applies to them, and may end up facing disciplinary or licensure actions,” Jones said.

Two students spoke in favor of the bill. One from Springville High School said she believes there shouldn’t be “gay pride” flags in the classroom, and that some of her teachers have “placed biases into what they’ve been teaching.”

“When I go to school, I want to be able to be taught how to think and not what to think,” she said.

Another student, from Maple Mountain High School, also spoke against allowing “symbols” she didn’t agree with in classrooms and “teachers that would tell us things that I didn’t want to believe in, but I felt that if I disagreed I wasn’t welcome.”

“School needs to be a place of learning and it needs to be a safe place and it was not that for me,” she said. “We need to prevent different beliefs from making other people uncomfortable.”

Representatives for conservative groups including Utah Parents United spoke in favor of the bill, arguing it would ensure “balanced, unbiased and neutral content” in classrooms.

But Zee Kilpack, who identified themself as a transgender person, spoke against the bill, arguing it discourages the mere discussion of the existence of LGBTQ+ people, who’ve historically had a hard enough time feeling welcome.

“Obviously, we live in Utah. We live in a place where a lot of parents don’t support LGBTQ+ ideology. And yet, queer kids exist anyway,” they said. “School was one of the few places where I could see people that were queer.”

Kilpack also argued HB303 would not “prepare kids for the future,” from colleges to workplaces “that will have all of these ideologies expressed.” They also worried it would restrict LGBTQ+ teachers from posting pictures with their partners, “where that can be a nonpolitical statement of them just existing.”

Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Logan, asked Stenquist if the bill would “cause teachers to feel like they’re monitored so much that they can’t say anything anymore.” Stenquist acknowledged “this will be somewhat of a paradigm shift for some teachers,” but only those that “may feel like part of their job is to endorse some particular worldview.”

“But I think the vast majority of teachers will probably not be affected by this,” Stenquist said, describing the “best teachers” as those that “students don’t know what their political viewpoints are. And I think that’s the goal that we need to get to.”

To questions about how to define a “social belief” or concerns that the bill’s language is too vague, Stenquist said it’s difficult to define “neutrality” in state code, but he welcomed anyone to offer “better language” to make it clearer than the current bill. It may not be “perfect,” he said, but he urged lawmakers not to “make perfect the enemy of good.”

Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, who has worked as an educator, argued against the bill, worried it will especially impact teachers of history, social studies, literature and other subjects that can cover controversial topics. She said it suggests “teachers aren’t trained and aren’t professional enough,” while there are already school policies and procedures in place that address unprofessionalism.

Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, vehemently argued in favor of the bill, saying it doesn’t “target” any single group.

“I get really tired of hearing that we’re targeting people,” said Birkeland, who this year sponsored a controversial bill to restrict transgender access in government-owned bathrooms and other facilities while also expanding unisex and single stall facilities. “We try to show kindness and compassion and then we’re told, ‘But you’re rejecting them.’ We’re not.”

Birkeland said the “majority of people do not care who you love, they want to let you love who you love and be who you are. But when we try to run bills to create balance, and the first thing we throw out is, ‘This targets one community,’ we send a message to these kids that they’re being targeted, and they’re not.”

“We want everyone — everyone — to walk in that class and feel like they belong, and that has to do with coming in and being spoken to with respect and dignity,” Birkeland said. “That’s why this bill’s before us, so that every kid — no matter their identity, no matter their beliefs — walks in and knows that they are respected, and will be treated with dignity.”

But one of Birkeland’s Republican colleagues, Rep. Neil Water, R-St. George, opposed the bill, saying he’s worried about its unintended consequences — along with legislation the Utah Legislature has already passed this year to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public entities.

“I’m concerned about sterilizing our classrooms,” he said.

House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, also supported the bill, first thanking students who spoke in support of the bill. “They showed bravery in an increasingly political school environment.”

“This bill refocuses our classrooms to basic academic learning and provides a professionalism standard that will support all students,” Lisonbee said. “It is vital that we provide these standards and the expectation of learning and exploring different ideas in a neutral environment.”

Utahn Jacob Hancey spoke against the bill, arguing against restricting teachers from expressing their viewpoints to help foster realistic, healthy debates.

Hancey said he “never saw eye-to-eye on anything political” with one of his high school teachers, “but our discussions were wonderful. We became friends until the day he died.”

“Every day we’d have arguments … I learned so much more from him and the respect that he showed me by giving me this chance to form my opinions and really refine them,” Hancey said, urging lawmakers not to support the bill.

“Because I think those conflicts are a chance for students to grow.”

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.

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Utah

From small-town Utah to NYC: Accomplished hairstylist reflects on journey to upscale SoHo salon

Published

4 hours ago

May 31, 2026

Press Room

From small-town Utah to NYC: Accomplished hairstylist reflects on journey to upscale SoHo salon

NEW YORK — When Reagan Baker-Jaillet was a teenager, she moved from small-town Tennessee to small-town Utah. Now she’s rolling out the red carpet for the grand opening of her salon in what some may call the biggest city of them all — New York City.

Baker-Jaillet is the owner of House of Reagan in SoHo, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. Her salon is stationed in a 120-year-old loft space that she transformed into a “whimsical, funky and upscale” establishment where she specializes in cutting and styling. Her niche aesthetic is “bedroom hair,” which she is in the process of trademarking.

Prior to opening her salon, she styled hair and modeled at New York Fashion Week, worked on projects for Netflix, Comedy Central, and “Saturday Night Live.” She’s been featured in several magazines, including Rolling Stone, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. She was also cast on an HBO dating show in 2023. Her transformation over the years, she said, can be attributed to learning at a young age how to reinvent herself.

“I’m the fifth out of six children in my family, and the youngest daughter,” Baker-Jaillet told KSL. “We moved from East Tennessee to Cedar City when I was in the middle of eighth grade. Before moving to Utah, we were all homeschooled, so Cedar City was really my introduction to being around kids my age and socializing daily. It was jarringly intimidating at first, but I learned to embrace the challenge of being a fish out of water.

“Most of the kids didn’t even know I hadn’t attended traditional school up until that point, or how deathly shy and socially inexperienced I was,” she continued. “By high school, I had mostly adapted and got involved in sports, after-school clubs, cheerleading, and was even voted into prom/homecoming court. I learned then how much I love the challenge of reinvention.”

The draw to glamour also came at a young age, as she watched her mom and older sisters put on makeup. She said that when she moved to Cedar City, she noticed that many of the girls in her class were “fearless” in the way they presented themselves, and she felt inspired.

“Growing up, I always loved watching my mom and sisters get ready and then going through their products when they weren’t home,” she said. “I practiced using their hot rollers and potions on myself and immediately noticed how elevated and great it made me feel. When I got to Utah, the girls were over-the-top and fearless with the way they did their hair, nails and makeup. I loved it.”

After high school, Baker-Jaillet attended Evan’s Hairstyling College in Cedar City and discovered that she not only loved cosmetology but also the diverse people she met on the job. This caused her to want to see more people and more of the world. To do that, she took a job as a nanny in New York and used that as a springboard to explore her new world.

“Cosmetology offered everything I loved — access to interesting conversations with a wide variety of people all day, and lots and lots of glamour,” she said. “I have to say, it was a fabulous choice.

“When I moved to the city in 2005, I was in awe of the surprises and thrills I came across at every corner,” she added. “Whether it was seeing an elderly person covered head to toe in tattoos, walking down the street, or wandering into some random store and finding an eccentric shop owner selling completely unrelated items, there was so much edge and backstory wherever you went.”

As she immersed herself in her new environment, with a set of hair-styling skills she had no way to capitalize on, she drew on another love that came naturally — writing. In the new age of blogging, she launched Hairdresser on Fire, which she said was a “huge part” of her career journey.

“I was a junior stylist with no clients yet, and as an early beauty blogger, I was able to combine my love of writing with what I was building day-to-day in the salon,” she said. “It catapulted my credibility as a beauty expert and helped me grow my clientele significantly. There are so many talented artists out there; writing about beauty set me apart.”

Staying true to who she is at the moment has allowed Baker-Jaillet the chance to create new versions of herself and the spaces to match. House of Reagan, she said, is very representative of who she is today.
“Out of all my creative endeavors, building this space has been the most challenging, but the most rewarding of all,” she said. “I’ve dreamt it up, creative-directed, and paid for almost all of it entirely by myself.
“This project has conditioned my mind to think beyond one-hour haircut increments and toward the bigger picture. I’m not always sure of what the end goal is, but I’m brainstorming and dreaming about what’s next all the time, and having a physical space allows me to jump on and execute those ideas right away.”
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As a big-city girl with small-town roots, she is grateful for a family that has allowed for autonomy — with a little room for sibling teasing, of course.
“Being on the younger end of six children gave me a lot of independence and confidence to figure things out on my own,” she said. “I’m naturally adventurous and a big risk taker, which I think has been funny for my family to understand at times. When I shared the news that I was cast in a show on HBO, my eldest sibling pleaded that I pretend to be an only child. That big family style of teasing will put hair on your chest and prepare you for the real world like nothing else.”

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Man guilty of crash that killed Utah CEO and his daughter gets maximum sentence – East Idaho News

Published

14 hours ago

May 30, 2026

Press Room

Man guilty of crash that killed Utah CEO and his daughter gets maximum sentence – East Idaho News

OGDEN, Utah (KSL) — The man convicted in the 2024 accident in the Ogden Canyon that killed two people after a bulldozer slid from the bed of his truck onto the victims’ vehicle has been handed the most severe sentence possible in the case.

Moreover, in sentencing Michael John Love on Friday, Judge Craig Hall ordered the incarceration terms on the five counts to run consecutively, making for a potential prison term of four to 23 years.

Utah sentencing parameters would point to probation in the case with jail time of zero to 270 days, but he is not required to follow them “and just cannot go along with those guidelines,” Hall said. “Simply put, probation is not an appropriate sentence in this case. Rather, I believe that the sentence should be the maximum sentence allowed by law as most appropriate.”

Preceding sentencing, family members fondly remembered the two fatality victims, Richard Hendrickson, 57, and his daughter Sally Hendrickson, 16. Love, for his part, apologized for the tragic turn of events. The elder Hendrickson had served as chief executive officer of Clearfield-based Lifetime Products.

A jury last March found Love guilty of two counts of negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor, in the deaths of the Hendricksons in the July 6, 2024, incident. That’s less than the convictions for manslaughter, a second-degree felony, sought by prosecutors. The jurors also found him guilty of aggravated assault, a second-degree felony, stemming from the injuries suffered by Mollie Hendrickson in the accident and two counts of obstruction of justice, one of them a third-degree felony, the other a class A misdemeanor.

RELATED | Jury convicts man of negligent homicide, not manslaughter, in crash that killed Utah CEO

As for actual incarceration time, Hall sentenced Love to 364 days of jail on each of the negligent homicide counts, one to 15 years imprisonment on the aggravated assault count, zero to five years imprisonment on the felony obstruction count, and 364 days of jail on the misdemeanor obstruction count. Love received credit for time served, nearly 600 days.

Love was hauling a 31,000-pound bulldozer when the piece of machinery, improperly secured, slid off his tow truck as he negotiated a curve along Ogden Canyon Road, a narrowing, winding roadway east of Ogden, and fell onto the oncoming vehicle driven by Richard Hendrickson. The force of the bulldozer sheared off the top of the Hendrickson vehicle, causing the two deaths and injuring Mollie Hendrickson, another of Richard Hendrickson’s daughters.

RELATED | Utah company mourns loss of CEO, his daughter in fatal Ogden crash

Hall scolded Love, an experienced tow-truck operator, for not properly securing the bulldozer. “There were simply no excuses for an individual, a licensed tow truck driver, to carry this bulldozer that was over 30,000 pounds on a metal track flatbed,” he said.

He also noted Love’s “extensive criminal history,” which includes prior convictions for theft, assault, impaired driving, burglary, driving on a suspended license, failure to secure a load and more. “You have been granted the privilege of probation and early interventions like drug court in the past, yet you have continued to engage in criminal, self-defeating behavior. Past leniency has clearly failed to deter this behavior, making the maximum sentence necessary today,” he said.

Furthermore, the judge said he was “troubled” by Love’s actions after the accident to cover up and obstruct the subsequent investigation, which led to the obstruction of justice convictions. He placed chains on the bed of his truck in the immediate aftermath of the crash as if to make it appear the bulldozer had been secured at several points, prompting the felony obstruction count. He misled law enforcement officials about how the bulldozer had been secured, leading to the misdemeanor obstruction count.

‘Bigger than life’

Richard Hendrickson had served as CEO of Clearfield-based Lifetime Products since 2013. He, his wife and three of the couple’s four children had spent the morning of July 6, 2024, boating at Pineview Reservoir and were on their way home when the tragedy occurred.

The man’s son, Sam Hendrickson, wife Julie Hendrickson and daughter Lyssa Hendrickson all addressed the court, expressing their grief over the deaths of Richard Hendrickson and Sally Hendrickson and pressing for prison time for Love. Mollie Hendrickson, severely injured, provided a pre-recorded statement.

“Being the only boy in the family means that I didn’t just lose a father that day, but a brother as well. The kindest and nicest man I’ve ever known was my father, and for that I’ll always be grateful,” Sam Hendrickson said. “My 16-year-old sister was just as amazing. Sally had a light about her that was contagious. She could light up a room simply by walking into it.”

He also remembered the ride with sister Mollie to the hospital after the accident, having to inform her of the two deaths. “Watching her determination to continue to recover and get better (despite) intense pain and countless surgeries has been incredible,” he said.

Julie Hendrickson said her late husband and daughter “are bigger than life” and that she continues to struggle with the loss.

Her husband “was my best friend and confidant,” she said. “I miss him every day…We had so many plans to do so much together.”

Love, shackled and wearing Weber County Jail garb, offered an apology and said the incident wasn’t intentional.

“If I could take it back, I would. I think about it every single day. I dream about it every single night. It’s something that I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life. I screwed up. I admit it,” he said.

Love’s attorney, Greg Skordas, defended his client, saying he’s remorseful and would be in tears whenever he visited him in jail. “He’s not the monster that everyone makes him out to be, and he’s not the remorseless human being that everyone wants him to be,” Skordas said.