Republican members of two Iowa House Judiciary subcommittees advanced two bills on Monday that continue the anti-LGBTQ agenda Gov. Kim Reynolds and legislative Republicans have enshrined in state law since 2022. As the hearings were underway, supporters of transgender rights and advocates for LGBTQ Iowans protested in the rotunda and halls of the State Capitol.
HSB 664 would prevent local governments from having civil rights ordinances that provide any protections that go beyond what state law specifies. The bill was introduced by Gov. Reynolds’ office.
Since 2022, when Reynolds signed into law a ban on trans girls and women participating in school or college sports on teams that correspond to their gender identity (despite the fact that there had never been a complaint in Iowa about trans girls and women participating in sports), the governor and Republican legislative leaders have advanced other bills that restrict the rights of LGBTQ Iowans, and transgender people in particular. This culminated in Iowa becoming the first state in American history to eliminate part of its civil rights code.
The 2025 bill, like all the legislation targeting LGBTQ Iowans, passed with just Republican support. It not only stripped gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Code, but also changed definitions in state law to prevent state agencies from recognizing trans and nonbinary Iowans as trans and nonbinary people.
Eighteen communities around the state have local ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity. They include some of the state’s largest municipalities — Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Dubuque, Council Bluffs, Iowa City and Waterloo — as well as smaller cities, like Fort Dodge and Decorah. Some of the ordinances were either passed or reaffirmed after the 2025 bill gutting the Iowa Civil Rights Act became law. HSB 664 would invalidate those ordinances and strip local governments of the authority to create new ones.
“The 2025 legislation is bad enough,” Coralville City Councilmember Katie Freeman, who is transgender, said during Monday’s subcommittee hearing. “This one continues to overreach right into my town. A community, a city, a county, have a right to self-govern based on the needs of their individual community.”
Coralville’s civil rights ordinances include protection against discrimination based on gender identity. In October, the city council passed a resolution reaffirming its support for the rights of transgender and nonbinary people.
“If you are unwilling to recognize the value of protecting gender identity at a state level, let communities that understand that value do so on their own,” Freeman said. They concluded their statement with, “Trans rights are human rights.”
Cynthia Paschen from Ames addressed the subcommittee. Paschen is a member of a group of mothers of transgender children who support a proposal under consideration by the Ames City Council that would protect the rights of transgender and nonbinary residents.
“We told our city council members, ‘Do this for our children — babies who were born in Ames, Iowa, babies who don’t feel welcome in Ames, Iowa, because of you guys,” Paschen told the three-member subcommittee.
Supporters of HSB 664 stressed the importance of making sure that local laws conform to state laws.
“With 99 different counties and over 900 different towns and communities, it does make sense that certain issues would have broad and consistent application across the state and not vary from one community to the next, or from one county to the next,” Danny Carroll of The Family Leader told the subcommittee. “You don’t need to use your imagination to come up with numerous examples where that consistency is important — if not vital — to the well-being of the state of Iowa.”
Carroll said determining what civil rights to recognize “should be the role of the state.”
The Family Leader is the rightwing Christian political group founded by Bob Vander Plaats, best known for its opposition to LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights and its support for policies that adhere to conservative evangelical Christian priorities. It is one of the most influential groups in Iowa Republican politics.
“You want a thousand different civil rights codes,” subcommittee member Rep. Sykler Wheeler said about the bill’s opponents. “That’s what you’re asking for.”
In 2018, near the beginning of his legislative career, Wheeler told Little Village, “My worldview begins with the Bible and taking it in its literal form…. As a state legislator, I will use the Bible as my starting point for making decisions on what legislation I should support and which I should oppose.”
The Republican from Hull has supported all the bill restricting LGBTQ rights the legislature has passed over the last four years.
“Think about all the different things that could be thrown into those civil rights codes,” Wheeler encouraged his fellow subcommittee members, Republican Rep. Steven Holt of Denison and Democratic Rep. Ross Wilburn of Ames, along with the members of the public in the hearing room. “It is very fitting for the state to say, ‘This is what it’s going to be in the state of Iowa, and you’re going to follow it,’ whether you’re a city, county, or whatever it might be.”
Subcommittee chair Holt took the lead role in passing the 2025 bill eliminating gender identity protection through the House in just one week. Like Wheeler, he has supported all the legislation limiting LGBTQ rights that Gov. Reynolds has signed into law. On Monday, he said erasing protections in state law for transgender and nonbinary people was needed “to achieve equal rights for everyone.” The new bill is needed to make sure there is no confusion.
“I think having a patchwork of different ordinances really creates a lot of confusion for businesses, it creates a lot of confusion for schools,” according to Holt. “We did what we did last year to ensure equal rights for everyone, and that is what we’re doing here today.”
Wilburn, the subcommittee’s lone Democrat, argued the bill represented overreach by the legislature and local government needed the ability to create ordinances that meet the needs of their residents.
Wilburn didn’t support advancing the bill, but Holt and Wheeler did. HSB 664 now goes the House Judiciary Committee, which Holt chairs.
Holt was also on the House Judiciary subcommittee that held a hearing on HSB 669 on Monday. The bill, introduced by Holt, “exempts from the definition of child abuse a person raising, guiding, or instructing a child in a manner consistent with the child’s sex” as determined at birth. It would stop a wide range of activities directed at transgender or nonbinary minors by parents, foster parents or guardians from being considered as abuse by investigators or courts. Protected behavior would range from refusing to use the pronouns a minor chooses to subjecting them discredited, pseudo-scientific practices like conversation therapy, or even refusing to allow a minor access to medically sound mental health counseling to treat conditions related to gender dysphoria.
None of these actions could be considered child abuse or child endangerment regardless of their impact on a child, if the bill becomes law. According to Holt, the bill protects parent’s rights, but would not impede investigations of “real cases of abuse.”
Supporters of the bill also focused on parents’ rights.
“Parents are responsible for their children and should not fear government intervention for acting in good faith,” Amber Williams of Inspired Life, a conservative Christian group, said in support. “Protecting parental rights is how we protect children and that is why this bill matters.”
Jim Florence of Ankeny said the bill is needed to protect Christian families, such as his, that believe gender is fixed and identical to the sex listed on a child’s birth certificate.
“We know from personal experience there needs to be legal protection for foster and adoptive parents who hold to religious convictions as Christians,” he told the subcommittee.
“Florence alleged his family faced discrimination during foster care training with a state-contracted agency because of their beliefs, saying their views were mocked and they were told they should not foster if they did not affirm LGBTQ identities,” the Gazette reported. “He said their foster license was later placed on hold in connection with their religious stance on same-sex marriage.”
Keenan Crow of One Iowa, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ Iowans, addressed the impact HSB 669 would have on children, pushing for the subcommittee to not to advance the bill. Crow described what undergoing conversation therapy would mean for LGBTQ kids.
“I don’t care what kind of language we couch this in,” they said. “I don’t care what the motivation is. I just know that this is a procedure noted by every major medical and mental health organization to cause increased rates of depression, anxiety, homelessness and suicide, and that is horrific. I can’t believe we are even having this conversation, and I ask you to vote no, and, rather than enabling this kind of torture, bring a bill to restrict its use across this state.”
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia ban conversion therapy for minors.
Chants of “love not hate” and “trans rights are human rights” by protesters in the hall and the rotunda could be heard inside the room during the subcommittee hearing. Rep. Holt dismissed the protesters, saying they were just “try to drown out those who disagree with them.”
“The fact of the matter is, I will do my job and stand for truth, and this legislation absolutely stands for truth, so I will be signing on to advance it to the full committee,” he said.
The subcommittee’s other Republican Rep. Jon Dunwell of Newton, also signed off on the bill, saying it was needed to protect the rights of parents “who believe that gender is determined by biology.”
The subcommittee’s lone Democrat, Rep. Aime Wichtendahl of Hiawatha, the first transgender member of the Iowa Legislature, opposed moving the bill forward. Wichtendahl called HSB 669 dangerous, and said it was based on “faulty science.”
“Under current Iowa law, no parent is required to affirm their children’s gender identity or support of treatment plan for the same, but parental rights are being used as a cudgel to enable harm upon children in the name of making them straight,” she said.
HSB 669 now advances the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, which Holt, the bill’s sponsor, chairs.
