Transphobic discrimination legalized in Iowa

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, has signed a bill into law removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

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Reynolds signed the bill Friday after both houses of the legislature passed it Thursday. “The signing makes Iowa the first state in the country to take away civil rights from a group it has previously protected in law,” The Des Moines Registerreports. The Iowa law has included gender identity since 2007, when the state had a Democratic governor, Chet Culver, and Democratic majorities in both legislative houses. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed in 2022 that discrimination against trans people was illegal in the state.

“It’s common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women,” Reynolds said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “In fact, it’s necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls.”

Related: Iowa senator condemns GOP in fiery speech over trans civil rights repeal: ‘Shame on all of you Christians’ (exclusive)

Actually, protection of transgender people has not been shown to have any ill effect on cisgender women and girls. And indeed, Iowa stripped rights from women and girls (and some trans and nonbinary people) in passing a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in 2023.

Iowa enacted the anti-trans law over the protests of about 2,000 of people who appeared at the state capitol Thursday and over the opposition of Democrats, who are now in the minority in both the Iowa Senate and House of Representatives.

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" Transgender Iowans are part of every community in this state — our families, our workplaces, our schools, our places of worship," Max Mowitz, executive director of LGBTQ+ group One Iowa, told the Register. "They deserve the same safety, stability and opportunity as anyone else. This law will cause real harm, making daily life harder and more uncertain for countless Iowans who simply want to live openly and authentically. History will not look kindly on this moment.”

Before Iowa's action, 23 states and the District of Columbia had laws banning discrimination based on both sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing, and 22 and D.C. banned such discrimination in public accommodations.

The 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County banned job discrimination based on both characteristics nationwide, so there is still some recourse under it. The new Iowa law, however, removes state-level protections not only in employment but also in housing, public accommodations, credit services, and more. It further requires birth certificates in the state to reflect birth sex as either male or female. It takes effect July 1.

Iowa Republicans said that removing gender identity from nondiscrimination law would help them defend other anti-trans laws in court, including its ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, its law barring trans students from using restrooms aligned with their gender identity, and another keeping trans women and girls from participating in female school sports.