DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa lawmakers on Wednesday declined to advance a bill that would have removed gender identity from the state’s civil rights law, a proposal that opponents say could subject LGBTQ+ Iowans to discrimination in education, housing and public spaces.
The bill has been introduced unsuccessfully in recent years, but reached the first step in the legislative process in Iowa on Wednesday when it was rejected by three members of a House Judiciary subcommittee. While discussing the measure, LGBTQ+ advocates outside the chamber shouted, “Trans rights are human rights.” Two of the subcommittee members are Republican and one is Democrat.
Not every state provides explicit protections for a person based on their gender identity, but opponents of the bill suggested that removing such pre-existing protections from a state’s anti-discrimination law stands out in an already historic period of Republican anti-trans laws. -led state houses.
House Republican Majority Leader Matt Windschitl — who is not a member of the subcommittee and did not participate in the vote — said Wednesday he doesn’t think it would be the “wise choice” to open up the well-established civil rights law break “you either agree with it all or you don’t.”
“Taking away those protections would then be an opportunity to discriminate against one of those protected classes,” he said of how the bill would be construed.
LGBTQ+ Iowans and allies who descended on the Iowa Capitol to protest the bill easily outnumbered supporters, though testimony initially alternated between pro and con. Some trans Iowans in the audience shared personal testimonies of the discrimination they have faced and the fear of being further marginalized.
Iowa’s civil rights law protects against discrimination in employment, wages, public benefits, housing, education, and credit practices based on certain characteristics of an individual. That includes gender identity, but also a person’s race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, religion, national origin and disability status.
Sexual orientation and gender identity were not originally included in Iowa’s Civil Rights Act of 1965. They were added in 2007 by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, with about a dozen Republicans in the two chambers joining in favor of the proposal.
State Rep. Jeff Shipley, author of the bill debated Wednesday, delivered an impassioned introduction arguing that there are no objective criteria for assessing gender identity and that there is a “viciously hostile” culture surrounding protecting these individuals from others. . Shipley said the latter was made clear by the protesters shouting expletives and giving him the finger as he left the room.
As written, the bill would have changed the definition of disability, a protected status, in the civil rights law to include the psychological issues some transgender people experience, known as gender dysphoria, or any other diagnosis related to gender identity disorder.
Those individuals would be protected, but advocates made clear Wednesday that being transgender is not a disability and that a broad group of transgender Iowans who do not experience gender dysphoria would remain exposed.
“I’m not disabled,” said Annie Sarcone, a transgender Iowan and director of the Des Moines Queer Youth Resource Center. “It’s unfortunate that the Iowa Legislature is trying to accomplish something like this. Because it is the only state that has made it this far.”
Iowa’s Republican-controlled statehouse has passed several bills in recent years that Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law that target LGBTQ+ Iowans, including banning transgender students from using public restrooms that match their gender identity, banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors and banning transgender women from participating in girls’ high school sports and women’s college sports.
These measures are part of a wave of laws recently passed in conservative states across the country that have led the Human Rights Campaign to declare a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans.
About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in homes and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank. Some additional states do not explicitly provide protection against such discrimination, but it is included in the legal interpretation of the statutes.
Federal protections against employment discrimination based on gender identity were strengthened in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in 2020, when conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that discrimination because of LGBTQ+ status was an extension of sex discrimination.
The Iowa Supreme Court expressly departed from the federal Supreme Court in a 2022 ruling.