On Thursday, the Iowa House approved a bill that prohibits local governments from having any civil rights ordinances that provide greater protections for rights than state law does. Eliminating the power of local governments to protect the rights of transgender and nonbinary people is one of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ stated priorities for her final legislative session as governor.
Beginning in 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 there had never been any complaints 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 last year.
All those bills passed with just Republican support. Every Democrat in the Iowa House and Senate voted against them.
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, the governor’s office introduced a bill to stop local governments from offering protection to transgender and nonbinary people facing discrimination because of their gender identity by restricting the scope of local civil rights ordinances to the specific limits of state-level civil rights protections already approved by the legislature. That bill, HF 2541, passed a House subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee with just Republican votes. But it wasn’t HF 2541 that the House approved on Thursday.
Instead of voting on HF 2541, Republican Rep. Steven Holt of Dennison, chair of the House Judiciary and one of the most prominent supporters of the anti-trans bills passed since 2022, used a legislative maneuver that will allow the restrictions in the bill to be approved by the Iowa Senate with no subcommittee or committee hearings.
Holt introduced HF 2541’s language preempting local government authority as an amendment to a bill passed by the Senate last year. Because the Senate already approved the bill, the amended version will go directly to the Senate floor for a final vote, with no opportunity for the public input that would occur in a subcommittee hearing or the extended discussion among lawmakers that might happen if it went before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The amendment was approved on a party-line vote.
Before it was amended, SF 579 was a bill creating a time limit on how long a city or a county civil rights agency or commission can take to consider a case. If a case is not resolved in a year, it can be transferred to the Iowa Office of Civil Rights. It also required local civil rights to refer any complaints involving “political subdivisions” to the state civil rights office for handling. And it eliminated the requirement that cities with a population of 29,000 or more have a civil rights commission. There are currently 25 civil rights commissions at the local level in Iowa.
Last year, SF 579 passed the Senate with bipartisan support. On Thursday, only Republicans voted for the amended version.
“We have just absolutely got to stop chipping away at the rights of Iowans,” Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat from Ames, said during the floor debate in the House. “Our local elected officials deserve the dignity and the responsibility to protect the rights of all their citizens.”
Last month, Ames became the latest city in Iowa to pass an ordinance designed to protect transgender and nonbinary residents against discrimination. The governor’s bill restricting how cities and counties can protect civil rights had already been approved by a House subcommittee when the Ames City Council voted 5-1 to amend its human rights ordinance to prohibit “[d]iscriminatory practices on the basis of gender identity in employment, wages, public accommodations, housing, education, and credit practices.”
“I believe that it is important to make Ames’ stance on this issue clear.,” Councilmember Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen said ahead of the city council vote. “… [I]n Ames, we believe in equal access to housing, to employment, to education, for all people.”
More than a dozen other cities, as well as Johnson County, have either adopted gender identity protections or passed resolutions restating their commitment to them, since Gov. Reynolds signed the bill stripping gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act last year.
“The communities of Ames, Bettendorf, Cedar Rapids, Coralville, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Decorah, Des Moines, Dubuque, Fort Dodge, Grinnell, Iowa City, Waterloo and Webster City, as well as the fine people of Johnson County, all said with voice that we still protect our transgender residents and welcome them in our community,” Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat from Hiawatha and the first transgender Iowan elected to the legislature, said during the floor debate on Thursday.
“My message to those 14 cities and one county is this: stand up,” she continued. “Stand up for justice, stand up for freedom and stand up for the rights of your citizens, because this state is long overdue for a check on its constitutional abuses and the reckless disregard for the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Stand up for your people.”
Wichtendahl said she has heard from many LGBTQ Iowans that they no longer feel welcome or safe in the state.
“This bill before us today makes a mockery of our state’s most sacred values,” Wichtendahl said. “It diminishes our ability to attract new workers and it spurs our friends and neighbors who will find friendlier homes in neighboring states.”
Republican Rep. Skyler Wheeler of Hull defended the amended SF 579. He used the argument Republican lawmakers and supporters of the governor’s original bill rolling back local civil rights protections have used since the subcommittee hearing: Wheeler told his fellow House members the bill was really about ensuring uniformity between local ordinances and state code, and providing legal clarity for businesses.
“We’re not going to have everybody and their mom decide they’re going to have this civil rights code and we’re going to throw everything in it or we’re going to take everything out of it,” he said. “That’s absolutely insane. It’s unworkable for businesses and it’s just a crazy idea.”
Like Holt, Wheeler has been a leader in promoting and passing anti-LGBTQ bills since entering the House in 2017. He talks openly about how his literal interpretation of the Bible forms the basis of his actions as a legislator.
The House approved the amended SF 579 by a vote of 60 to 26. It now goes to the Senate for final approval.
