SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's tough new 100% ID check may get an exception under a bill that is moving in the state legislature.
On Friday, the House Business & Labor Committee voted to support House Bill 59, which would give restaurants a break on requiring every customer to show ID to purchase alcohol. Instead, the bill would revert to Utah's old law for restaurant licensees, where a server could determine if someone looked 35 or younger before insisting on identification.
The 100% ID check law went into effect on January 1, requiring every customer who purchases alcohol in Utah to present identification. The bill was designed to crack down on people who are restricted, but then complaints started coming in from Utah's tourism hotspots involving foreign and out-of-state guests who bristled at the new requirement (especially if they left their ID or passport in their hotel room).
Moab's popular 98 Center restaurant created a video on Instagram cleverly ribbing the new law, while also earnestly trying to inform their guests about the ID requirement.
"We wanted to get the message out there that when you’re visiting, it’s not going to be like other states in a restaurant," said Anna Koehne McCord, who works at 98 Center and runs their social media accounts. "With the new law? It’s going to be more intense."
She said servers have had some encounters with guests who were unaware of the new law.
"I can look at someone and know they are not 18 years old if they have wrinkles and gray hair," Koehne McCord told FOX 13 News. "It’s very uncomfortable to ask for ID, and they look at you like, 'You’re joking, right?'"
So Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, is proposing to give restaurants a little bit of a break.
"I wouldn’t say rolling back, we’re modifying it," he told FOX 13 News. "We’ve listened to concerns from the industry, also the advocates from underage drinking prevention. We’ve struck a compromise."
Bill cracks down on law enforcement quotas by any other name:
The bill still mandates 100% ID checks at bars and at grocery and convenience stores. That's to ensure that restricted people cannot purchase alcohol. The bill also cracks down on an issue important to anti-youth drinking and alcohol abuse prevention groups — fake IDs.
During Friday's hearing, Rep. Eliason passed out a stack of fake IDs that had been seized by the State Bureau of Investigations during underage alcohol busts. HB59 would now allow an employee at a bar, restaurant, grocery or convenience store to seize the suspected fake ID and hold it for law enforcement. Before, they just had to return it and watch the person leave (often to another bar to try to get in).
"They can hold that ID, and that’s a crime," Rep. Eliason said of possessing one.
HB59 has brought together two groups who sometimes appear on opposing sides of Utah liquor laws. Alcohol abuse prevention advocates, who seek to tighten Utah's liquor laws to prevent drunk driving deaths and other harms, sat next to hospitality advocates who often press for loosening of strict liquor policies to encourage tourism.
"This bill is in a very good place and we should pass this bill," said Art Brown, an alcohol abuse prevention advocate who praised the fake ID provision. "It will really cut down and solve this problem."
Michelle Corigliano, the head of the Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association, was grateful to see the wiggle-room granted to a server in a restaurant.
"Thank you so much for making the changes," she told lawmakers on the committee. "Because if I get one more call from an owner, entrepreneur, who said they had to turn away a large party because the group brought in their grandfather who was 80 years-old and didn’t have an ID and wasn’t allowed on premise..." she said, sighing. "Oh my gosh!"
HB59 now heads to the full Utah House of Representatives for a vote.
