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Lawmakers renew push to strip protections for transgender Iowans in civil rights law
Supporters say repealing gender identity from state code needed to protect ‘common sense’ Republican-passed transgender laws
Feb. 23, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Feb. 24, 2025 7:42 am
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DES MOINES — Transgender Iowans could be denied housing, employment, hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery based on their gender identity under proposed legislation legal experts say would be an unprecedented move to repeal civil rights protections that have been in place for nearly two decades.
Supporters contend the legislation is needed to protect “common sense” Republican-written state laws passed in recent years aimed at preserving safe spaces and opportunities for women.
Those laws bar transgender females from participating in girls high school sports and women’s college athletics, prohibit transgender students from using school bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity and prevent Iowa doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to transgender minors to treat gender dysphoria.
Iowa House Republican lawmakers Thursday introduced House Study Bill 242, which would remove gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Gender identity was added to the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 2007 when Democrats controlled the governorship and both chambers of the Iowa Legislature. Today, Republicans have complete control of the state’s lawmaking process.
The act protects certain classes from discrimination in employment and wages, public accommodations and services, housing, education and more.
Should the bill pass and be signed into law, Iowa would become the first state in the nation to remove a protected class from a state’s civil rights act, said Drake University law professor Sally Frank.
Iowa Safe Schools, an organization that advocates for young LGBTQ Iowans, said the bill “subverts the constitutional guarantees of equality under the law and seeks to push trans Iowans back into the shadows” and “sends a message that trans Iowans aren’t welcome in their own state.”
What would the bill do?
Rep. Steve Holt, a Republican from Denison who chairs the House’s Judiciary Committee and introduced the legislation, assigned the bill to a three-member subcommittee that includes himself to give it its first legislative consideration. A hearing on the bill had not yet been scheduled as of Friday.
The bill would:
- Strike the definition of gender identity in state law;
- Create a new section in state law to define “sex and related terms,” and define “female” as an individual who has, will have or would have “but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident,” a reproductive system that produces ova and “male” as an individual who produces sperm;
- State that the term “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” and that “separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.” The language echoes that associated with the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared segregation on the basis of race to be legal;
- Require all state and local government data collection to identify individuals as either male or female;
- Eliminate the ability for transgender Iowans to change their birth certificate. Current law allows this if the person’s doctor certifies that their sex has changed due to surgery or other treatment.
The legislation combines elements of bills that failed to advance last year in the Legislature, which sparked consecutive weeks of raucous protests at the Iowa Capitol from transgender Iowans and their family members, LGBTQ+ rights and school safety advocates and civil rights activists.
All three members of a House Judiciary subcommittee in 2024 declined to advance similar legislation that would have removed gender identity protections from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Members of the subcommittee worried the bill violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
The following day, Gov. Kim Reynolds proposed a bill to define “man” and “woman” in Iowa Code and require transgender Iowans to list both their sex assigned at birth and their post-transition sex on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
The proposal was amended and advanced out of committee, but failed to pass the House.
Reynolds’ office did not respond to a message Friday seeking comment on the new House bill.
Last year, Reynolds and supporters of her bill said women and men possess unique biological differences, and that defining a woman in code has become necessary to protect spaces for women’s health, safety and privacy that they say are being threatened, like domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.
“Clearly there are circumstances when it is necessary and right to differentiate between a woman … and a man who merely believes he’s a woman,” according to The Family Leader, a Christian conservative organization based in Iowa.
“A man has no place in a bathroom or locker room with our wives and daughters,” the group said in a statement to The Gazette. “A woman in prison shouldn't be forced to share a cell with a biological man. Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for so-called ‘gender transition’ surgeries.”
The group argues it’s time Iowa restores “common sense” on an issue where it says progressive activists have gone too far.
“There are good reasons for our laws to protect women and children. And we shouldn't force business owners, employers, or state agencies to implement policies that disregard the reality of biological sex,” the group stated.
Attorneys, school safety advocates, legal experts and civil rights activists, however, note there is a lack of documented evidence in Iowa of transgender individuals or men pretending to be transgender harassing or attacking women in shelters, locker rooms, restrooms or other places — suggesting the legislation is driven more by philosophical, religious and political concerns rather than real-world needs.
Critics argue such proposals target a small, vulnerable population that already face higher risks of bullying, suicide, poor mental health and housing instability.
The Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law estimates that about 0.3 of percent the Iowa population — or about 7,100 people — are transgender.
Why try again?
While previous attempts to pass similar legislation failed, transgender Iowans worry an Iowa Legislature that picked up new members and expanded Republican supermajorities in both chambers in the last election — coupled with efforts at the federal level — may make it harder to challenge this time.
The proposed bill comes a month after President Donald Trump signed an executive order proclaiming the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female.
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” the order states. “This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.”
Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford, in a statement to The Gazette, said while House Republicans in the past have felt it unnecessary to remove legal protections for gender identity, a 2023 Iowa court ruling allowing Iowans on Medicaid to receive coverage for gender-affirming surgery now make it a necessity.
A Polk County District Court judge ruled in favor of two transgender plaintiffs who challenged an Iowa Medicaid rule barring coverage for gender transition procedures. The court ruled the ban violated the Iowa Constitution's equal protection clause and the 2007 law adding "gender identity" to the list of classes protected under the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
The Iowa Supreme Court dismissed the state’s appeal, finding it moot as the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services already had paid for the transition surgeries of the two Iowans who brought the lawsuit, leaving the lower court ruling intact.
Due to the ruling, Grassley said gender identity must be removed from the Iowa Civil Rights Act to uphold policies passed by Statehouse Republicans that provide protections regarding girls’ sports, locker rooms and restrooms, and prohibiting sex reassignment surgeries on minors.
“These are common sense policies Iowans have begged us to take action on and supported in subsequent elections,” Grassley said. “It has become clear because of that court decision that those popular policies are at risk as long as gender identity remains specified in the civil rights code. It is for that reason, and at the urging of many Iowans, that we have decided it is time to give this bill the full consideration of the Iowa Hosue Republican caucus.”
Not all Iowa House Republicans, though, are on board.
“I will oppose stripping Iowans of their civil rights protections with every fiber of my being,” Rep. Austin Harris, R-Moulton, posted on social media platform X.
Harris did not return a message Friday seeking further comment.
How would Iowans be impacted?
University of Iowa law professor Leonard Sandler said the legislation would strip away legal protections for gender identity that have been established over time, which have been crucial in areas like workplace benefits, medical treatment and housing.
Sandler wrote a 2016 report in collaboration with the UI LGBTQ Health Clinic providing a snapshot of transgender discrimination in Iowa.
The report found an average of 41 complaints of gender identity discrimination had been filed with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission per year since 2010.
The Iowa City Human Rights Commission had received an average of three complaints per year based on gender identity discrimination since 2009; however city personnel said people incorrectly believe that gender identity constitutes sex discrimination.
The Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission had received one complaint since 2007.
Many transgender individuals, though, are unaware of their rights or fear they will be received in a hostile fashion if they come forward, the report noted. As a result, the numbers likely are a gross underestimate of actual discrimination encountered.
The report documents instances of transgender Iowans being denied treatment for medical services, being turned away from nursing homes and rehab centers, being removed from a women’s restroom by police and being illegally profiled, arrested and jailed for suspected prostitution at a hotel.
In 2016, the ACLU of Iowa filed a civil-rights complaint on behalf of Jesse Vroegh, a transgender nurse with the Iowa Department of Corrections, after he was denied access to bathrooms, locker rooms and health insurance on the basis of gender identity.
In 2019, a Polk County District Court jury ruled the state had engaged in sex and gender identity discrimination prohibited by the Iowa Civil Rights Act. It also found that the state’s employee health insurance plan violated the Iowa Civil Rights Act by explicitly excluding coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming surgery.
In a 2022 decision, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the jury award and found that the state had unlawfully discriminated against Vroegh.
“The need is even greater now to keep or bolster protections for transgender individuals and families — especially when venom, myths, distortions and exaggerated fears are emanating from on high,” Sandler said.
ACLU of Iowa Executive Director Mark Stringer said should the bill pass, it would allow for widespread discrimination of transgender individuals.
“It means a person can be fired, denied work, an apartment, or even a hotel room for no reason, as long as the person who is discriminating says they’re doing it because they’re transgender,” Stringer said. “That is not acceptable.”
Holt, the Republican House Judiciary Committee chair, asserted the proposal would neither take away any “basic rights” of transgender Iowans nor legalize discrimination. He noted fewer than half the states have civil rights protections for transgender residents.
‘They do not want us to exist’
The bill also would prohibit transgender Iowans from obtaining government documents, such as driver’s licenses, that reflect their gender identity.
The legislation would require birth certificates mention only the sex “as observed or clinically verified at birth.”
The ban on changing birth certificates would prohibit transgender Iowans from obtaining driver’s licenses, passports and other identification and government documents that describe who they are, effectively erasing any recognition of their gender identity, Drake’s Frank said.
Doing so invites discrimination and further outing of transgender individuals and people whose identities do not match their physical appearance, especially when trying to board a plane, enter another country or return to the United States, Frank and Stringer said.
“It'll look like it's a false passport or driver’s license,” Frank said.
That compromises their privacy, their equal treatment and in some cases, even their safety, Stringer said.
He and Sandler said the Iowa Civil Rights Act does not give special rights to transgender Iowans. Rather, it guarantees equal treatment for all Iowans.
"It's not going to make anything better. It's going to make it far worse for many people who are perceived to be transgender or identify themselves openly (as transgender),“ Sandler said.
Iowa’s first openly transgender state lawmaker, Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Hiawatha Democrat, said removing rights from transgender Iowans goes against the state’s values and motto: “Our Liberties We Prize; Our Rights We Will Maintain.”
“There has never been a case in these last 18 years of a trans woman going into a bathroom, going into a women's shelter, going into any kind of women's space to harass or abuse women,” she said. “There has never been in that entire time any man pretending to be trans to do the same. They are lying to you. They are fanning the flames of fear because they do not want us to exist.
“... I can't tell you how many kids that I've talked to at the Capitol, how many families I've talked to who are moving out of the state because they no longer feel safe. And we look around and wonder why people aren't staying in Iowa. It's because of (expletive) like this.”
Erin Murphy of The Gazette’s Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com
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