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DES MOINES, Iowa (CN) — The Republican-dominated Iowa Legislature on Thursday removed civil rights protections for transgender Iowans who have been protected from discrimination for 18 years. The state’s lawmakers put the legislation on a fast track, from introduction to the governor’s desk in just a week’s time.
Senate File 418 will remove civil rights protections for transgender people from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. The measure passed the Republican-controlled Iowa House and Senate, and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, is expected to sign it into law.
The bill passed along party lines 33-15 in the Senate and 60-36 in the House where five Republicans joined 31 Democrats voting no.
An estimated 2,500 people stood in hallways outside the Senate and House chambers at the Iowa Capitol Thursday, many loudly chanting opposition to what was happening inside.
In a statement issued after Thursday’s vote, ACLU of Iowa executive director Mark Stringer said, “Today, the Iowa Legislature took the barbaric measure of passing a proposal to remove gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. For nearly two decades, Iowa law has protected people from discrimination based on their gender identity. This has been a lifeline for people in areas as broad as housing, workplace fairness, credit, public accommodations, and education.”
The ACLU-Iowa in an earlier statement said that with this bill Iowa would be the first and only state in the country to repeal broad legislation ensuring the rights of transgender people.”
State Representative Steven Holt, a Republican from Denison who managed the bill in the House Thursday, defended the legislation. “In spite of loud proclamations otherwise, transgender Iowans will have the same rights and protections as everyone else, as they should,” he said in comments on the House floor Thursday. “The party that has championed the rights of women for decades don’t want to talk about the rights of women being erased” by elevating the rights of transgender persons, which he said comes at the rights of women.
The bill scrubs all references to the term “gender identity” from the Iowa Code and defines “sex” to mean “the state of being either male or female as observed or clinically verified at birth.” It defines “male” and “female” in terms of the reproductive system a person has or will have “through the course of normal development.”
The corresponding sex — male or female — must be shown on birth certificates.
As a result, transgender Iowans will no longer be a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act against discrimination in housing, employment, wages, public accommodation and education. The bill’s supporters say that, among other things, the change means trans people would no longer be able to use public restrooms, dressing rooms and showers designated for the opposite sex, and would not be eligible for taxpayer-paid sex-change operations.
On Monday, hundreds of advocates for LGBTQ rights filled the Iowa Capitol and chanted “trans rights are human rights.” Two protesters were handcuffed and arrested by state troopers. Opponents of the bill held signs reading “trans blood will be on your hands” and “I will not censor myself to comfort your ignorance” superimposed over the transgender flag.
On the other side of the issue, Kathryn Kueter of Pleasant Hill told a Senate subcommittee that “if anyone is being erased from society, it is me, a woman.”
“Having gender identity in the civil rights code directly contradicts the civil rights given to sex, specifically women,” she said. “You can’t tell women their spaces and their rights will be protected and then in the same breath allow men counterfeiting as women to invade those spaces.”
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