116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Transgender Iowans would lose civil rights protections under Republican proposal
Gender identity was added to the Iowa Civil Rights Act in 2007; a bill introduced Thursday by a Republican state lawmaker would remove it
Feb. 20, 2025 6:28 pm, Updated: Feb. 21, 2025 7:12 am
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
DES MOINES — Protections for transgender Iowans would be removed from the Iowa Civil Rights Act after nearly two decades under legislation introduced Thursday by Republican state lawmakers.
The bill would remove gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act, where it was added in 2007.
The Iowa Civil Rights Act, created in its original form in 1965, protects certain classes from discrimination in employment and wages, public accommodations and services, housing, education and more.
The legislation to remove protections for transgender people was introduced by Rep. Steve Holt, a Republican from Denison who chairs the House’s Judiciary Committee.
A three-member subcommittee, including Holt, has been assigned the bill to give it its first legislative consideration. A hearing on the bill had not yet been scheduled Thursday.
The bill, House Study Bill 242, also 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 produces ova and “male” as an individual who produces sperm.
- State that “separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”
- Require all state and local government data collection to identify individuals as either male or female.
- Require birth certificates to include a designation of the sex at birth, and require any new birth certificate in which the sex is changed also include a designation of the person’s sex at birth.
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.
Iowa Safe Schools, an organization that advocates for young LGBTQ Iowans, said if the bill is passed into law, Iowa would become the first state in the nation to remove a protected class from a state’s civil rights act.
The bill “subverts the constitutional guarantees of equality under the law and seeks to push trans Iowans back into the shadows,” Becky Tayler, executive director for Iowa Safe Schools, said in a statement Thursday. “This bill sends a message that trans Iowans aren’t welcome in their own state. We will not stand by while the Iowa Legislature seeks to erase the students we serve.”
Max Mowitz, Executive Director of One Iowa, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ Iowans, in a statement Thursday called the proposal “the worst bill we have ever seen come out of the Iowa Legislature,” a standard Mowitz described as “a high bar.”
“This bill is pointless, unnecessary, and unbelievably cruel,” Mowitz said in the statement. “Transgender Iowans are our friends, our neighbors, and our coworkers. We deserve the same fundamental rights, dignity, and respect as anyone else. This legislation will not improve the life of a single Iowan, but it will undoubtedly make the lives of transgender Iowans worse. We call on legislators to reject this proposal and get back to work on policies that make our state better for everyone.”
Late Thursday, Holt sent a statement to The Gazette in which he claimed the proposal would neither take away any “basic rights” of transgender Iowans nor legalize discrimination. Holt said gender identity must be removed from the Iowa Civil Rights Act to protect Republican-written state laws passed in recent years that impact transgender Iowans.
Holt also noted fewer than half U.S. states have civil rights protections for transgender residents. According to Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ rights organization, 23 states — including Iowa — and the District of Columbia prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Current Iowa code actually results in the infringement of many other Iowans’ rights, particularly women. I believe we must take action,” Holt said in his statement. “Over the past few years, the Iowa Legislature has passed a number of common sense policies at the urging of Iowans, such as protections for girls’ sports, locker rooms, and restrooms and prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors. I have reached the conclusion that these policies that are overwhelmingly supported by Iowans are at risk so long as gender identity remains a protected class in Iowa code. …
“So long as gender identity remains in Iowa Code, the other common sense policies we have passed on this issue are at risk of suffering the same fate in court. This is why I believe we must act.”
The 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. “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system,” Trump’s executive order stated.
Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com
Get the latest Iowa politics and government coverage each morning in the On Iowa Politics newsletter.
Daily Newsletters