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Iowa GOP lawmakers divided over pesticide bill, DEI bans and CO2 pipeline limits
Key deadline hits for legislation to advance this session
Apr. 3, 2025 6:53 pm, Updated: Apr. 4, 2025 7:27 am
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DES MOINES — House Republicans for a second year in a row put the brakes on a Senate-passed bill to limit Iowans’ ability to sue pesticide companies when their products are linked to serious health problems.
While Senate Republicans, for the first time in four years, advanced legislation to limit the use of eminent domain to claim farmland for hazardous liquid pipeline use — but only after being heavily amended, with few of its original provisions from a House bill remaining.
Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers advanced legislation to further curtail diversity, equity and inclusion programming across the state, but disagree as to how far they should go. Senate Republicans pushed back on a provision that would extend banning of DEI offices and officers to private colleges and universities that receive funding from the Iowa Tuition Grant program.
The issues illustrate the legislative divide between Republican leaders in the House and Senate, which was apparent Thursday as legislation neared the second “funnel” deadline of the 2025 session.
“I don't try to tell the House how to do their job. I suppose the House can be entitled to their wrong opinion,” Senate President Amy Sinclair, a Republican from Allerton, told reporters Thursday of House Republicans not advancing the Senate pesticide bill.
House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford, said there were not enough votes to advance the bill out of that chamber.
In order to remain eligible moving forward this session, non-tax policy or nonbudget or spending bills passed by the House need to be approved by Senate committees, and vice versa for Senate-passed bills. The deadline is intended to narrow lawmakers’ workload heading into the final weeks of the 2025 session and allow them to begin the work on tax and budget policy.
Iowa Republicans hold agenda-setting super majorities in the House and Senate. While the bills did not pass the “funnel” deadline, House and Senate leaders have multiple legislative tools at their disposal if they choose to still resurrect a bill.
House and Senate Democrats argue Republican lawmakers have done little to lower costs for Iowans, and have ignored their proposals to help Iowans access affordable housing and child care.
“Republicans have done nothing to help Iowa's economy this session,” House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, told reporters Thursday. “... We have introduced legislation on child care, to lower costs on housing, to give property tax rebates, to reduce eliminate tax on tips and overtime, and to restore unemployment benefits to 26 weeks. These are tangible, real options that Iowans could see the benefit from immediately.”
Pesticide shield bill fails to advance
For the second year in a row, House lawmakers did not take up a Senate bill that would shield pesticide companies from lawsuits over warning labeling to inform consumers of health risks.
Senate File 394 passed out of the Senate 25-21 with six Republicans joining all Democrats to vote against it.
The bill would shield pesticide companies like Bayer, the company that owns glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, which is used by farmers across the state, from liability over failure to warn about the product’s health risks like cancer.
Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cleared glyphosate of posing cancer risks, a federal district court requested the agency review that decision in 2022, according to Reuters. The International Agency for Research on Cancer determined it is "probably carcinogenic to humans."
Iowa has the fastest-growing rate of new cancers and ranks second highest in cancer rates nationally, the Iowa Cancer Registry found.
Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that created Roundup, in 2018. Roundup is primarily produced in Muscatine and Bayer has multiple crop science plants across Iowa.
The legislation has received pushback from environmental organizers and Iowans who say glyphosate has caused them or their loved ones to develop cancer. Backers of the legislation argue pesticide companies are being unfairly targeted with lawsuits.
Bayer has faced about 167,000 lawsuits from individuals claiming the company failed to warn them about the health risks of their products, costing the company billions in litigation expenses.
“I believe wholeheartedly that the bill we passed doesn't prevent anybody from seeking justice if they're damaged by a company,” Sinclair told reporters. “But I also believe that to have a proper system of justice, we have to make sure that individuals or companies can't be sued for following the law.”
Senate Democratic Leader Janice Weiner, of Iowa City, said the Iowa Legislature should not be "taking away Iowans' right to sue in the event that they believe they have been harmed."
"From our read of it on the Senate side, it's really an immunity bill, and once you give one set of companies immunity, others are going to line up for it," Weiner said at a news conference Thursday.
Grassley said House Republicans “see both sides of this issue” and had concerns with “the public perception of” the bill.
“This product has been following all of the EPA approved labeling … but I think some of the narrative that's been out there maybe distracts from that,” he said. “And I think the caucus just is in a position where they're not sure that they can support it at this point in time.”
Senate advances CO2 pipeline restrictions
The Senate has taken the most action on pipeline and eminent domain legislation over the past four years, but Senate Republicans significantly altered the House bill, House File 639.
The bill included requirements for hazardous liquid pipeline companies to carry certain amounts of insurance and restore damaged farmland, defined public good for eminent domain use, required Iowa Utilities Commission members to attend hearings on pipeline projects, prohibited renewal of carbon dioxide capture pipeline projects after 25 years, and placed constraints on when and how pipeline companies can file lawsuits against landowners.
After being amended by the Senate Commerce Committee, only the requirements for land restoration, state commissioners’ hearing attendance and pipeline company’s insurance remained.
Sen. Michael Bousselot, a Republican from Ankeny, introduced the new version, which now contains provisions that allow pipeline companies to alter a project to go outside the original planned route to obtain a voluntary easement; expand protections for crop loss, soil degradation and drainage tile; require the Iowa Utilities Commission to rule on a proposed project within one year of eminent domain power being requested; and apply all provisions to any projects seeking eminent domain from the state’s utility regulators, including transmission lines.
Landowners and property rights activists who have pushed for the restrictions view the amendment as a poison pill, potentially drawing in opposition from natural gas and electric transmission line companies previously excluded from the bill.
Bousselot said the goal of the changes was to create landowner protections for all utility projects, not just CO2 pipelines.
The Ankeny Republican previously worked for Summit Agricultural Group, which owns Summit Carbon Solutions. That company has proposed a 2,500-mile pipeline through five states including Iowa to capture CO2 from ethanol plants and bury it in North Dakota.
“We're at a point where we have some language that we can all agree on,” Sinclair said of Senate Republicans. “So we've gotten to a point where we have 26 people willing to step up and advance some property rights legislation. I can't speak to the House’s opinion of anything. I don't typically ask their opinion when I'm working on legislation with my team.”
Grassley said he sees the Senate’s actions as a positive step.
“From my perspective, I would say we want to continue this conversation,” he told reporters. “ … But I think whatever we're going to ultimately agree to and want to work on needs to have significant property rights protections in that.”
Bill further banning DEI offices advances
Legislation prohibiting state entities, local governments and community colleges from establishing and maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion offices advanced Thursday out of the Senate Education Committee along party lines.
House File 856 is an expansion of a 2024 law that barred Iowa public universities from funding DEI efforts.
Democratic Sens. Herman Quirmbach of Ames and Mike Zimmer of DeWitt said the bill would set back progress made in uplifting and representing marginalized and underrepresented groups.
"This bill, more than anything else, I think, suppresses free speech," Quirmbach said. "It says we have to erase people of color, people of different genders, people of different orientations, can't address any of those things, you gotta put it all back in the closet."
Republican Sen. Ken Rozenboom of Pella said the legislation is consistent with the legislation passed last session.
“It is not the proper place of the state entity to promote ideologies and opinions as their official role,” he said. “State and entities are established to help provide services to Iowa set on the statute, and it's outside of that role to use their funds to tout political issues.”
The committee struck a section of the bill, which was passed out of the House in March, that would’ve prohibited private colleges and universities that participate in the Iowa Tuition Grant Program from funding DEI offices and officers.
Rozenboom, during a subcommittee on the bill earlier this week, said the Legislature has never added conditions to the Iowa Tuition Grant in its more than 50-year history, and feared if it starts now more conditions will be added later.
“I’m very uncomfortable, personally … with dipping our toe into conditioning the Iowa Tuition Grant,” Rozenboom said.
Sinclair echoed Rozenboom in expressing concern about “diving into those private colleges and universities, into their governance.”
“Republicans in general believe it's important that the local government, state government (and) that our government-funded colleges and universities are doing hiring based on merit — are advancing their policies based on merit, not on other qualities that don't necessarily provide for the best product for citizens of state of Iowa,” she said. “ … We don't look at it as eliminating diversity, equity or inclusion. We look at it as advancing merit.”
Grassley said House Republicans continue to push for a broader approach to curbing DEI practices across the state.
“Hopefully, something we can work through and find some level of agreement on,” he said.
Erin Murphy and Maya Marchel Hoff of The Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com
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