Iowa governor signs nation's first bill removing transgender civil rights protections

Iowa became the first state to strike anti-discrimination protections for transgender people from its civil rights code on Friday after the state’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed hotly contested legislation into law.

The bill, introduced last week, sped through the Legislature despite widespread opposition from Democrats and LGBTQ rights advocates who flooded the statehouse in Des Moines to protest its passage.

Iowa’s Republican-led Senate passed the measure Thursday in a 33-15 vote along party lines, and the state House voted 60-36 to approve the bill later in the evening. It will take effect July 1.

Senate File 418 removes gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act, the decades-old law protecting Iowans from employment, housing, education and public accommodations discrimination. A bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers added protections for sexual orientation and gender identity in 2007 when Democrats controlled both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office.

President Trump, who signed an executive order during his first hours back in office proclaiming the federal government would recognize only two sexes, male and female, had pushed for the state to eliminate the protections for transgender people.

In explaining her approval of the bill, Reynolds said, “It is common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women. In fact, it is necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls.”

“But unfortunately, these commonsense protections were at risk because, before I signed this bill, the Civil Rights Code blurred the biological line between the sexes,” Reynolds said in a signing statement, which she read aloud on her Facebook page. “It has also forced Iowa taxpayers to pay for gender reassignment surgeries. That is unacceptable to me, and it is unacceptable to most Iowans.”

“I know this is a sensitive issue for some, many of whom have heard misinformation about what this bill does,” she said. “The truth is that it simply brings Iowa in line with the federal Civil Rights Code, as well as most states. We all agree that every Iowan, without exception, deserves respect and dignity. We are all children of God, and no law changes that.”

More than half the nation does not have explicit statewide laws protecting people from discrimination based on gender identity, though federal law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment.

State Democrats and Republicans clashed Thursday during floor debates on the bill, which GOP lawmakers said was necessary to enforce state laws against transgender athletes and bathroom access.

State Rep. Steven Holt, the Republican who introduced the original House bill, said adding gender identity protections to Iowa’s civil rights code had “elevated” the rights of transgender people above those of cisgender women and girls.

Iowa Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat and the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, said the measure deprives trans people “of our life, liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.”

“The purpose of this bill, the purpose of every anti-trans bill, is to further erase us from public life and to stigmatize our existence,” she said.

Max Mowitz, executive director of One Iowa, a state LGBTQ rights group, said Reynolds, by signing the bill, “has chosen to put Iowa on the wrong side of history.”

“This law sends a devastating message: that transgender Iowans are not worthy of the same rights, dignity, and protections as their neighbors,” Mowitz said Friday in a statement.

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