SALT LAKE CITY ā A majority of Utahns support a new state law banning the display of most flags by public school teachers and government entities, the latest Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found.
The law, known as HB77, Flag Display Amendments, prohibits municipal or state buildings, as well as public school employees acting within their official duties, from placing a flag in a prominent location on government property unless the flag is one of a dozen exceptions.
Permitted flags include unaltered official country, state, municipal, military, tribal and school flags. The restriction on all other flags does not apply to historic versions of these flags, depictions of flags ā including lapel pins and signs ā or flags temporarily displayed by an organization authorized to use public schools.
HB77 drew plenty of debate during the 2025 legislative session, but Utah’s new flag ban enjoys the approval of more than 6 in 10 registered voters in the state, according to a Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll conducted by HarrisX.
“The Legislature was aligned with the overwhelming majority of Utahns on this particular bill,” said Jason Perry, director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute, in a Deseret News interview.
Strong support for flag bill
Of the 800 respondents surveyed, 62% said they approved, 28% said they disapproved and 9% said they didn’t know when asked whether they supported or opposed a new law limiting the flags that can be publicly displayed in schools and on government property.
A plurality of voters said their support for the law was enthusiastic: Four in 10 strongly approved of the legislation, a quarter somewhat approved and the remaining 30% was evenly divided among those who somewhat disapproved or strongly disapproved.
The poll was administered online from April 9-12 with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
“The results are clear,” House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, told the Deseret News in a statement. “A strong majority of Utahns agree that symbols displayed in classrooms and government buildings should represent unity, respect for our nation and state, and a focus on education ā not political or ideological distractions.”
Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, agreed with Schultz that the law was needed to establish “a consistent standard” to ensure “that public buildings remain welcoming to all Utahns.”
“This poll shows that the majority of Utahns support this approach and believe public institutions should remain dedicated to their core duties,” Adams said in a statement.
Partisan divide on flags
The largest disparity in support for the new law came down to partisan affiliation.
The survey found that 81% of self-identified Republicans support the law. Nearly 6 out of 10 Republicans indicated that they strongly support it.
A slight majority, 51%, of independents also support it, while only 22% of Democrats do. Nearly 7 out of 10 Democrats said they oppose the law, with 46% signaling strong opposition.
Support for the law was shared by men and women. The poll found 67% support among men and 58% support among women. Support increased with age: 57% of those 18-34 support the law compared to 72% of those 65 and older.
“It’s a hard issue that really gets to the heart of perspectives on these social issues themselves,” Perry said. “These issues sort of touch on a theme that we have seen for the past couple of sessions, that have had support from a majority of Utahns, but that is certainly not the case with Democrats in the state.”
What matters most are, especially in classrooms, the policies and practices and school rules that ensure that every child feels welcome.
āMarina Lowe, Equality Utah
Proponents of HB77 who testified in legislative hearings, many of them parents of school-aged children, argued that a restriction on flags is a commonsense policy to ensure classrooms remain focused on teaching, not politics.
Meanwhile, many of the bill’s critics, who showed up by the thousands to protest its passage, framed it as a way to target the rainbow, or pride flag that represents LGBTQ social movements, which they said helps some Utah residents feel included.
“What matters most are, especially in classrooms, the policies and practices and school rules that ensure that every child feels welcome,” Equality Utah policy director Marina Lowe told the Deseret News. “The reason the (pride) flag started getting hung in the first place was because there were particular populations that were feeling marginalized and unwelcome.”
While the pride flag is not mentioned in the legislative text, the sponsor of HB77, Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, has suggested in some social mediaposts that one intention behind his bill is to remove pride flags from classrooms and municipal buildings.
Lee modeled his bill after a similar proposal that failed in the final hours of the 2024 session. The resurrected version received additional pushback during the 2025 session after Lee expanded its scope to include flags displayed by a state or local government entity in or on government property.
Following this change, Equality Utah came out against the bill. Lowe said she wants to encourage lawmakers to reconsider portions of the bill that constrain the free speech of governments, which, she said, should be accountable to voters, not the Legislature.
Corinne Johnson, president of Utah Parents United, praised the willingness of the Legislature to wade into a controversial topic because, she said, it benefits all residents to prohibit public employees from flying divisive flags.
“To parents, it makes complete sense to us,” Johnson said. “In an effort to try and be inclusionary to one group, we have now created division in our school environments.”
Supporters of the law are not opposing one group or another, according to Johnson. The goal behind the law is to return a sense of neutrality to the places that are meant to represent and educate all Utahns regardless of identity, she said.
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.