Iowa governor signs bill removing gender identity from state civil rights protections

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill Friday that strikes gender identity from the state’s civil rights law, making Iowa the first state to remove civil rights from a previously protected class.

The bill passed the Republican-majority state Senate, 33-15, along party lines Thursday. Less than an hour later, the House passed its version of the bill, 60-36, with five Republicans joining Democrats to vote against it. 

Reynolds said in a statement Friday that the bill “safeguards the rights of women and girls.” She said the civil rights code’s protections against discrimination based on gender identity “blurred the biological lines between the sexes,” and “forced Iowa taxpayers to pay for gender-reassignment surgeries.”

“We all agree that every Iowan, without exception, deserves respect and dignity,” she said. “What this bill does accomplish is to strengthen protections for women and girls, and I believe that it is the right thing to do.”

The Iowa Civil Rights Act broadly prohibits discrimination in many areas of life, including employment, housing, education and credit. In 2007, the state Legislature, which was then controlled by Democrats, passed a bill that extended those protections to LGBTQ people, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes. 

The new law removes gender identity from the code. It also requires that birth certificates reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth and removes a clause that previously allowed a trans person to update the sex marker on their birth certificate if they had a notarized affidavit from a doctor and surgeon attesting that they had medically transitioned. 

Iowa state Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, the first trans person elected to the state’s General Assembly, said during the House debate Thursday that the bill “revokes protections to our homes and our ability to access credit. In other words, it deprives us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

She said that the same week that she transitioned and came out publicly at work, she received a letter from her property management company telling her that she had 30 days to move.

“They would not tell me the real reason they wanted me gone,” Wichtendahl said. “Do you know the humiliation of having to lose your home? I pray that you never do. I never want that for anyone.”