Iowa would make history by gutting protections enshrined in its Civil Rights Act for almost two decades to make discrimination against transgender Iowans legal, if a bill introduced in the Iowa House on Thursday becomes law. HSB 242 would also alter definitions used in state law to eliminate acknowledging the existence of transgender people as transgender people.
“This is the worst bill we have ever seen come out of the Iowa Legislature, and that is a high bar,” Max Mowitz, executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy organization One Iowa, said in a statement on Thursday night. “This would wreak havoc on the lives of transgender people across the state, upending their ability to do basic things like rent an apartment or get a credit card.”
“More than that, it removes their ability to get government documents that match their gender and legally defines them out of existence. The consequences of this bill will also serve to weaken protections for intersex and cisgender Iowans who fail to meet the rigid gender assumptions contained within.”
In 2007, when Democrats controlled both chambers of the Iowa Legislature and the governor’s office, they added “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to the Iowa Civil Rights Act to protect the rights of LGBTQ Iowans. Since then, Republicans have repeatedly attempted to weaken the protection of LGBTQ people’s civil rights. Bills to eliminate the protections added in 2007 have been introduced repeatedly, but until last year, none even received a hearing in a subcommittee.
Last year, HF 2082, a bill to eliminate gender identity protections from the Iowa Civil Rights Act, was considered by a House subcommittee after being introduced by Rep. Jeff Shipley, a Republican from Birmingham. While people protested against the bill outside the committee room, the members of the subcommittee — two Republicans, Charley Thomson of Charles City and John Wills of Spirit Lake, and Democrat Sami Scheetz of Cedar Rapids — unanimously decided against advancing HF 2032, killing it. This year will be different.
Rep. Steven Holt of Denison will chair the subcommittee considering HSB 242. Holt is the lawmaker who introduced the bill on Thursday. Holt is also the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which will vote on it after the subcommittee advances it. And on Thursday night, House Speaker Pat Grassley issued a statement saying he wants HSB 242 to advance.
According to Grassley, “we have decided it is time to give this bill the full consideration of the Iowa House Republican caucus.” He complained “popular policies are at risk” of being struck down by courts “as long as gender identity remains specified in the civil rights code.” The policies Grassley listed in his statement were the ban on transgender girls and women participating in school and college sports on teams that match their gender identity; the bill stopping transgender students, as well as transgender staff and any transgender parent or visitors, from using a school bathroom that matched their identities; and prohibiting gender-affirming medical care prescribed by doctors for transgender youths under 18 (while allowing gender-affirming care for cisgender minors to remain legal).
Grassley cited an Iowa Supreme Court decision striking down the state’s attempt to stop Medicaid for paying for gender-affirming care for transgender adults deemed medically necessary by doctors as the sort of problem he wants HSB 242 to eliminate.
Steven Holt issued a statement using almost the exact same language as Grassley’s. Holt began his statement by saying, “Every single Iowan deserves to have their human rights protected and to be treated with dignity and respect,” before explaining that HSB 242 is needed to stop laws that discriminate against transgender Iowans from being overturned because of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Gov. Reynolds did not issue a statement about HSB 242, but she likely supports it, because it contains provisions from a bill she introduced in last year’s legislative session after Shipley’s bill was killed by the subcommittee.
HSB 242 would change state law to reduce the term “gender” to just a synonym for sex, and define sexes just in terms of ova and sperm production. Under the terms of Holt’s bill, a “female” is defined as “an individual who has, had, will have through the course of normal development, or would have but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident, a reproductive system that at some point produces ova” and a “male” as “an individual who has, had, will have through the course of normal development, or would have but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident, a reproductive system that at some point produces sperm.”
The governor’s bill in 2024 would have introduced those same definitions, using slightly different language. The two bills use the exact same language when it comes to banning transgender women from women’s facilities, including bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers and preventing them from being placed in women’s prisons or other detention facilities.
The language in both bills echoes that of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregation legal.
“The term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical,” both bills state. “Separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”
Both the governor’s bill and the current bill would change how birth certificates are issued in Iowa. Currently, a transgender individual can have their birth certificate updated if they submitted a notarized affidavit from their physician stating their sex has changed. That would no longer be possible if HSB 242 passes, and would have been prohibited if the governor’s bill had passed last year. Sex assigned by a doctor at birth would remain on a birth certificate. This, in turn, will affect numerous situations in which a person must produce proof of identity.
Both bills introduce definitions of mother and father based on their definitions of female and male. That would seem to be a small change, in view of the other drastic changes in the bill, but even such a small change can produce extensive and possibly unexpected results.
“The word ‘mother’ itself is mentioned 325 times in Iowa Code,” Keenan Crow of One Iowa pointed out during testimony before the House committee considering the governor’s bill last year. “Are you confident, have you gone through each of these statutes to ensure that you haven’t created any unintended consequences there?”
Crow added, “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.”
The governor’s bill passed at the subcommittee and committee on party-line votes, with all the Republicans supporting it and all the Democrats opposing it. It faced concerned opposition from the public and large protests at the State Capitol, and finally died because the Iowa Senate never took it up.
Given Grassley’s statement, it seems that HSB 242 will likely get further than the governor’s bill did and reach the House floor for debate and a final vote.
“This bill is pointless, unnecessary, and unbelievably cruel,” One Iowa’s Max Mowitz said. “Transgender Iowans are our friends, our neighbors, and our coworkers. We deserve the same fundamental rights, dignity, and respect as anyone else. This legislation will not improve the life of a single Iowan, but it will undoubtedly make the lives of transgender Iowans worse. We call on legislators to reject this proposal and get back to work on policies that make our state better for everyone.”
