House passes DOT liability clarification after debate; parental-responsibility education bill rejected

The Utah House of Representatives on March 6 passed an amended Department of Transportation liability bill and rejected a parental-responsibility measure after extended floor debate.

Representative Brown, sponsor of the amended Senate Bill 50, said the change was a technical correction meant to preserve the long-standing common-law standard that ‘‘the department needs to exercise reasonable care in designing, constructing, and maintaining a state highway in a reasonably safe condition for travel.’’ He and other backers said the amendment prevents recent judicial expansions of liability from imposing a larger duty on UDOT without legislative review.

Opponents pressed the bill’s sponsor on whether it properly accounts for existing governmental tort-immunity statutes and worried about whether narrowing judicial interpretation could reduce recourse for seriously injured people. Representative Christensen said he was ‘‘concerned’’ that the bill might undermine plaintiffs’ ability to hold the state accountable in serious cases and asked whether the language cross-referenced governmental-immunity code sections. Representative Brown replied that the bill ‘‘simply brings us to where we have been for over a hundred years’’ and that a broader change to government immunity would require a separate, full discussion.

The House adopted Amendment #2 and approved SB 50 as amended by a recorded vote of 68 yeas, 3 nays, with 4 absent.

On a separate, more contentious measure, Representative Jeremy Peterson introduced Senate Bill 39, described as a parental-responsibility bill that would instruct the State Board of Education to create and provide curriculum and materials to parents about sex education and require schools to notify parents twice a year that such materials are available free of charge. Supporters said the materials would help parents and leverage the school communication schedule to reach families; Representative Peterson said the materials would be provided ‘‘at no cost’’ and that the bill was ‘‘about parental involvement.’’

Opponents said the state need not create or distribute materials that are widely available from churches, publishers and online sources, and raised cost and access concerns if materials were hosted online or restricted by passwords. Representative Green said there is an ‘‘abundance of materials’’ already available and that the bill would be an inappropriate use of limited state resources. After extended questioning and debate, SB 39 failed the House on a recorded vote of 16 yeas and 50 nays, with 9 absent.

Votes at a glance (selected items from the day): SB 50 (Department of Transportation liability amendments) — amended and passed, 68–3; SB 39 (Parental Responsibility for Sex-Education Training) — failed, 16–50; HJR 13 (honoring Ambassador John Price) — passed; a range of consent-calendar technical and policy bills (for example SB 44 construction trades licensing revisions; SB 168 CPA licensing amendments; HB 345 expanding sixth-grade access) were read, explained and passed or placed on the appropriate calendars as recorded in the floor record.

What’s next: SB 50, as amended and approved by the House, will be returned to the Senate for further consideration. SB 39’s failure in the House ends the measure for now unless resubmitted. The House recessed until 2 p.m.