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, a Republican, 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.
The law also revises a measure Reynolds signed in 2023 that prohibits the instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade to change “gender identity” to “gender theory,” which it defines as the concept that someone can have “an internal sense of gender that is incongruent with the individual’s sex” assigned at birth. Critics have called the measure a “don’t say gay” law.
Democratic 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.”
Wichtendahl added, through tears, that transitioning saved her life.
“The sum total of every anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bill is to make our existence illegal, to force us back into the closet,” she said.
Republican state Sen. Jason Schultz, who introduced the Senate’s version of the bill, noted that the state’s civil rights code has been cited in some lawsuits and court decisions in favor of trans rights, including a 2023 decision that requires the state’s Medicaid program to cover transition-related care, the Des-Moines Register reported.
He also said that the code’s protections for trans people could be used against the state’s law prohibiting trans student athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identities and another law barring transition-related care for minors.
“All these legal protections are at risk due to the inclusion of the words ‘gender identity’ in our code,” Schultz said Thursday.
More than 2,000 people rallied to protest the Senate vote Thursday, according to local reports and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa, with signs that read “Trans rights are human rights.” The crowd also booed and yelled at senators following their vote, the Des-Moines Register reported.
Prior to signing the bill, Reynolds said it was meant to bring Iowa in line with federal law and the laws of most states. However, federal law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity following the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County.
State and local protections from discrimination based on gender identity vary, with 23 states explicitly prohibiting such discrimination in employment, 22 states prohibiting it in housing and 27 states prohibiting gender identity discrimination in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.
After Reynolds signed the bill Friday, Wichtendahl told NBC News it felt like a “gut punch,” and that she’s heard from trans constituents who are scared for their lives. She said her message to them is to stand together.
“Refuse to give in to despair, because the greatest act of rebellion that you can do in these dystopian times is to live your life unafraid and be happy,” she said. “And I know after yesterday, that’s a new level of challenge, but it’s the greatest act of rebellion, and the greatest thing that you can do for yourself right now is show the world that you are unafraid to live your life.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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