"after their girl sneakerd out at night"
How long ago was this? From what I see, sneaking out or taking any action is less common for young people today. I would actually be encouraged to see a kid take action without permission, even if it's action I don't agree with, because there's not enough independent individual action in the world anymore.

I know this is off your point of the gov't interfering with the parents' decision, but what stands out to me is that the child or young woman had the initiative to do something. Something has happened in the past 20 years.

It's not so much "there is a law", but rather, the states have so-called Child Protective Services agencies which feel free to arbitrarily take your children away for such sins as leaving them alone at home in the afternoon or having them wait in the car while you go shopping. Utah's new law is about taking away part of CPS's unbounded discretion, but it's only a start.

Which is not to say that CPS doesn't sometimes find either (1) actual abuse or (2) children being a real public nuisance, who should be stopped (and adult third-parties don't dare touch them nowadays). We need to roll back that whole area of law 100 years, not just abolish CPS.

"Was there a law preventing it?"
I don't about Utah, but some places are passing laws against kids doing anything unsupervised. Moreover kids face constant questioning from adults under 30 who see them out and have never heard of the concept of kids playing unsupervised. They react to 8-y/o kids playing at a park like seeing a lost 3-y/o.

I grew up in the 80, just missing the time when parent became a verb, creating a generation of young adults for whom adulting is a verb.

"playing and exploring with friends"
I think if we deprive people of this, it's like depriving them of some important vitamin while growing up. I've seen some of them reach early adulthood and experience anxiety at the prospect of making the simplest decision. I don't think it's a mental illness issue. They really never have had the slightest bit of freedom in their lives. If they start debating who gets to go first or which game to play, a hovering adult rushes over and resolves it.

I love how the cub scouts began the school year saying this year the kids will be doing things with fire, knives, shop tools in a fun and responsible way. I watched my nine-old cut with a bandsaw after someone showed him how to do it and saw he was of a temperament to be keenly aware of the danger of how one mistake could cut off a finger. I see him and get sad when he struggles with some task others have a natural aptitude for and see him kindly offer to help others with things he's a natural at. Those ups and downs, little successes and failures, are something people try to shield kids from. I really think my 9-y/o internalizes the idea that he's good at some things bad at other, that it's his choice if he wants to work at improving at things he's not good at or work on becoming even better at things he's good at, and that there are more things to try than a human life has time for so it's okay to try and fail; that's part of life. These other kids need an emotional support fluffy at the first sign of failure. It's not because they're pansies or snowflakes or whatever epithet. It's because their parents shielded them from any failure or disagreement, and they believed their parents' and teachers' message that any failure/disagreement was abhorrent.

agreed a lone child wandering is too much a target or a danger to self esp. if not self reliant which has become very rare in children today.

You bring up very good points. There are circumstances where it may be ok to be a" free range" child but as a pediatrician who has had to deal with sex trafficking in children/abuse it requires judgement on the parents part to still know what is going on and what the environment in the neighborhood is... A law cannot replace judgement and actual parenting .

"Walk or ride a bike? "
We are the one family on our block that sends our 7- and 9-y/o out to play in the neighborhood. One amazing thing that has happened is other parents have confided they used to go out and play, but they felt like they shouldn't let there kids out b/c no one's out and "things are different today." So kids are starting to go out more; I'm surprised it's working. One parent lets her 4-y/o son play with my kids at a park briefly if my kids watch him. The 4-y/o loves going out into the big wide world and my 7-y/o feels the desire to be a responsible role model and looking out for someone younger. It's how people should grow up! This is almost unheard-of now. Usually kids spend every waking minute with an adult hovering telling them exactly what to do.

I think it's shoehorning to make this about left/right bickering. There has been a phenomenal shift since I was a kid. My kids riding their bike to the same park in Madison I rode to at their age is now seen as controversial. It seems like all the way through high-school, kids are now used to someone monitoring them and telling them where to go. They don't resent it. When they get even the most basic freedom to walk down the road and decide what to do, some of them feel the need for emotional support animals.

I swore I would not grow old and say "kids these days...", but I really think something bad happened in the 90s, right after I had grown up. If I had grown up 10 years later, I would not have ridden my bike to the park, to school, or learned to use the bus system.