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As Iowa’s Civil Rights Act turns 60, some advocates fear for its future
After the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds removed gender identity as a protected class, some Iowans wonder whether other classes will be next.
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DES MOINES — In February, hundreds of people packed into the Iowa Capitol rotunda, shouting, chanting and waving transgender pride flags as Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate chambers passed a bill removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Shortly after, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the legislation, making Iowa the first state to remove a protected class from its civil code.
While this was one of the most contentious and widely followed events of the 2025 legislative session, it also coincided with another historic benchmark for the state: the 60th anniversary of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
More than a month later, in a much emptier and quieter rotunda, staff from the Iowa Office of Civil Rights stood at a table, speaking to passersby and handing out literature highlighting the work they do for civil rights in Iowa to mark the act’s April 29 anniversary.
Signed in 1965, the Iowa Civil Rights Act provides legal protection from discrimination against protected classes regarding housing, employment, education, public services and accommodations, banking and more.
While this year’s anniversary took on a more low-key tone, a much larger event was held a decade ago for the act’s 50th year.
As the act quietly turns 60, some who were involved in its formation and continuation reflect on where it is today and worry about where it will stand in the future.
Iowa’s civil rights legacy
In 1851, Iowa became the third state in the country to overturn a ban on interracial marriage, decades before other Midwestern states followed suit.
After that, Iowa continued to be a leading state in the country in civil rights. In 1868, an Iowa Supreme Court ruling integrated Iowa's schools 96 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision did the same thing.
In 2009, Iowa became the fourth state, and the first in the Midwest, to legalize same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015.
“We have been in the forefront for centuries, really going back to the 1800s in terms of civil rights, and it's always surprised people when they hear that history,” said Alicia Claypool, founder of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa and former chair of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. “We have that foundation, and yet here we are, nearly two centuries later.”
Iowa civil rights lawyer Roxanne Conlin remembers the passage of the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 1965. Six years later, she litigated the first court case, Iron Workers Local No. 67 v. Hart, under the act as an attorney in the early days of her legal career.
Despite the act’s passage, Conlin said it took a while for Iowa to adhere to it.
“It took a very long time,” Conlin said. “The law existed, people did not know about the law, people did not follow the law.”
Since 1965, lawmakers have amended the act to add a slate of protected classes, including sex in 1970, disability and age in 1972 and sexual orientation and gender identity in 2007.
Removing gender identity
During the 2024 legislative session, a bill proposing the removal of gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act was introduced, but failed to advance out of a three-person subcommittee.
This year, a similar bill was passed by both chambers and signed by the governor within just more than a week of its introduction.
Republican lawmakers argued that legal protections for transgender Iowans guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act have made some spaces, including bathrooms and locker rooms, more dangerous for women.
“The removal of gender identity as a protected class means that transgender rights are not elevated of both women and other citizens. The hyperbolic argument that taking this step will cause discrimination does not hold up to scrutiny or common sense,” Republican Rep. Steven Holt, of Denison, the bill’s floor manager in the House, said during debate on the legislation in February. “The legislature of Iowa created the Civil Rights Code, and we believe it is absolutely within our authority to change it. Obvious in our authority to add classes to the Civil Rights Code is our authority to alter that same code and remove what had previously been put there by prior legislatures.”
After the removal of gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act goes into effect on July 1, complaints of alleged illegal discrimination based on gender identity to the Iowa Office of Human Rights that happened on June 30 or up to 300 days before that date still will be taken up by the office, according to the office.
Gender identity and sexual orientation were placed in the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 2007, when Democrats controlled the Iowa Legislature and the governor’s office. Currently, Republican majorities give the GOP full control of the state lawmaking process.
Ralph Rosenberg, a former Democratic state legislator who served in the Iowa House and Senate in the 1980s and 1990s, and was director of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission from 2003 through 2010, was part of a coalition that worked to add gender identity protections to the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
“Having that law in place meant that we had a policy set by the state, by government, saying this is what the law of the land is,” Rosenberg said. “The schools wanted to obey it, and they also understood the sensitivities of a lot of the schools just becoming aware of the trans community.”
Democratic Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, of Ames, was the floor manager of the bill, tallying the votes it had to pass and introducing it on the floor of the House. She still has the big notebook she used to track where lawmakers fell on the legislation.
“It was such a huge honor to do that, to be selected to be the person to manage that bill. Pat Murphy was the speaker of the House at the time, and he said, ‘You know what, that there's never going to be anything bigger … this is the biggest thing you'll ever do,’ and he was right,” Wessel-Kroeschell said.
Nearly two decades later in the same chamber, Wessel-Kroeschell watched as what she helped pass was struck down. She noted a shift in tone around the issue as well as other LGBTQ+-related legislation, adding that when she worked on the bill’s passage, there was an outpouring of public support, including from the business community.
“We've just found over the last few years that so many people are afraid to even register in favor or in opposition to a bill. They are simply putting undecided down,” Wessel-Kroeschell said. “I’ve been on both ends of it. It’s kind of unbelievable.”
Five Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against the bill in the House, including Rep. Norlin Mommsen, of DeWitt.
“I voted against removing gender identity from the civil rights code because I'm concerned it could lead to discrimination of some people,” Mommsen said. “I just am against discrimination, no matter what you call it. That's one of the things I've tried to be here, is consistent.”
This wasn’t the first time Mommsen backed the Iowa Civil Rights Act on the House floor. In 2015, he was one of six Republicans who signed onto a House resolution honoring the 50th anniversary of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which failed to advance.
The Iowa Office of Civil Rights
Along with establishing civil rights protections, the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965 also created the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, which enforces the act, provides conflict resolution services including mediation and conciliation for civil rights matters, and works to prevent discrimination by providing training and education to the public.
Kristin Stiffler, who Reynolds appointed as the director of the Iowa Office of Civil Rights in 2023, said during the commission’s 60th year, the office hired an outreach coordinator and plans on holding more educational events across the state this year.
“We are really focusing on, especially the 60th, to really help people understand what our office, our agency does in regards to how we fulfill our mission and support Iowans,” Stiffler said. “What our main mission is, is to provide impartial, fact-driven, investigative legal reports.”
Last year, the office completed almost 1,500 legal investigations at different stages within its process, Stiffler said.
The office has experienced changes in the last few years. In Reynolds’ 2023 government realignment bill, the office became an attached unit of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. Last year, the legislature passed a bill that shifted the Iowa Civil Rights Commission under the Office of Civil Rights.
Stiffler said this shift aligned the office with a change made in 1977 when commission appointment power was shifted to the governor and the new law didn’t alter how the office or commission functioned.
‘We're going in the exact opposite direction of that legacy’
When he served in the Iowa Legislature, Rosenberg said the tone around LGBTQ+ issues was vastly different compared to today. He said that although bills expanding LGBTQ+ rights didn’t have broad bipartisan support, including adding gender identity to the Iowa Civil Rights Act, more lawmakers were willing to listen and consider the legislation.
“There was not this hatred which has really been fomented in the last 10 years, which is really disturbing. And it's disturbing because people haven't pushed back,” Rosenberg said. “We didn't have the hatred. We just had questions, as people during the debate would ask me things, or when we were debating HIV/AIDS legislation and hate crimes laws, people were more curious.”
Keenan Crow, director of Policy and Advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization, has lobbied at the Iowa Capitol for nearly a decade. Compared to the first LGBTQ+-related bill they worked with lawmakers on relating to AIDS, Crow said there has been a shift in how lawmakers approach these issues.
“It feels more like a cynical political calculation interacting up there these days than it does about trying to figure out where the evidence points us and what policy would be best for our state,” Crow said. “Now it's like, well, ‘what policy will be best for me getting reelected and for fundraising?’”
Crow added that they know many Iowans are leaving the state after gender identity protections were removed from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, including One Iowa Board members.
“It's almost like we're going in the exact opposite direction of that legacy that we established for hundreds of years,” Crow said. “There's … a lot of folks who are understandably scared, who are worried about themselves, about their families.”
Claypool said she wouldn’t be surprised if removing gender identity from the Civil Rights Act is the first domino, with other classes following in future legislative sessions. She says, despite recent changes, she still has hope for the future of the act.
“There have been hundreds of people that have worked on these issues over the decades, and some of them are gone now, and I just don't want us to forget about all the people that have fought for justice and equality in our state,” Claypool said. “We need, we need younger people to, you know, pick up the mantle and carry us forward.”
The Gazette's Tom Barton and Erin Murphy contributed to this report.
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