Gov. Kim Reynolds’ bill that would change how state laws and regulations are made in ways that would undermine the rights of transgender people will not pass during this legislative session. HF 2389 would have needed to be passed by a committee in the Iowa Senate this week, in order to remain viable.
But the bill, which was originally fast-tracked in the Iowa House, passing both a subcommittee and a committee on party-line votes on the same day, was never brought to the floor of the House for debate and a final vote, and was never taken up by the Senate.
HF 2389 would have introduced new definitions for “sex and related terms” in Iowa Code to be used in all laws and regulations. The bill defined a female as “a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ‘ova’ and a ‘male’ as a person whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
“The term ‘woman’ or ‘girl’ refers to a female and the term ‘man’ or ‘boy’ refers to a male,” the section of the bill creating definitions continued.
“The term ‘woman’ or ‘girl’ refers to a female and the term ‘man’ or ‘boy’ refers to a male,” the section continues. “The term ‘mother’ means a parent who is female and the term ‘father’ means a parent who is male.”
The bill also classified a person “born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of disorder or difference of sex development” as disabled.
HF 2389 allowed transgender people to be denied equal access to some facilities, declaring that the “term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical. Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”
That echo of the language of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring racial segregation legal, attracted a lot of attention. Other provisions that would have required the driver’s licenses and birth certificates of transgender Iowans to display the sex assigned to them at birth, as well as their current gender.
The driver’s license change was removed by the House Education Committee before they passed it on Feb. 6. An Iowa Poll conducted at the end of February found a plurality of Iowans opposed changing how birth certificates are issued to transgender people.
That poll didn’t ask about the other parts of HF 2389, but it was the section defining terms that would have had the widest impact. And that impact could have gone well beyond the bill’s apparently intention to undermine the rights of transgender and nonbinary Iowans.
“The word ‘mother’ itself is mentioned 325 times in Iowa Code,” Keenan Crow of One Iowa pointed out during a House Education Committee hearing on the bill, the week after the committee passed HF 2389. “Are you confident, have you gone through each of these statutes to ensure that you haven’t created any unintended consequences there?”
Crow, director of policy and advocacy for the Des Moines-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf on LGBTQ people, told the committee, “This legislation is not written for Iowa. It is national legislation poured into Iowa without any regard to existing Iowa law. And what that means is, as previous speakers have mentioned, we are looking at a nearly innumerable number of unintended consequences in our future.”
Gov. Reynolds’ office sent HF 2389 to the legislature one day after the Iowa House rejected a bill that would have stripped protection for transgender people out of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
“Women and men are not identical; they possess unique biological differences,” Reynolds said in written statement when the bill was introduced. “That’s not controversial, it’s common sense. Just like we did with girls’ sports, this bill protects women’s spaces and rights afforded to us by Iowa law and the constitution.”
As of Tuesday, 479 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this year, according to an ACLU database. With 34 such bills introduced this year, Iowa ranks in the top 10 of states in terms of anti-LGBTQ legislation, alongside Mississippi, Oklahoma and Kansas. While most of those bills have died as the legislature’s second funnel week comes to a close, one has already been passed by the House and Senate and is now awaiting Gov. Reynolds’ signature.
SF 2095, which supporters call the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It goes beyond the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that became a federal law in 1993, which applies to federal actions.
“State action shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, unless the government demonstrates that applying the burden to that person’s exercise of religion is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest,” the bill states.
Except for complaints about vaccine requirements and other COVID-19 mitigation efforts during the height of the pandemic, there haven’t been claims of the government burdening people’s exercise of religion in Iowa, beyond some assertions that having to treat LGBTQ individuals the same as everyone else may violate a person’s interpretation of God’s will.
Following a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, invoking claims of religious freedom, has become a common tool for creating exemptions to allow discrimination in LGBTQ people.
During the Senate floor debate on the bill, Sen. Zach Wahls spoke about the potential discriminatory uses SF 2095.
“This legislation is just the latest in a long and exhausting line of bills that will make it more difficult for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer Iowans to live, work and raise a family in this state,” the Coralville Democrat said. “And we know that because we have seen how these laws are used in other states not as a shield exclusively to protect the religious freedom of believers, but as a sword to discriminate against others who believe and identify differently across the United States.”
The bill passed the Iowa Senate on a party-line vote, with only Republican support, on Feb. 20. The House passed it on another party-line vote on Feb. 29.
After the House vote, Gov. Reynolds issued a written statement saying, “religious freedom is endowed upon us by our creator – not government.”
“Twenty-three states around the country, with both Republican and Democrat governors, have passed similar laws,” the governor said. “Now, it’s Iowa’s turn.”
