KDSN RADIO News
Bill deleting gender identity from Iowa Civil Rights Code advancing quickly
A bill to remove gender identity protections from the Iowa Civil Rights Act is eligible for debate in the Iowa House Thursday and will be considered by a Senate subcommittee today.
The bill will be the subject of a public hearing on Thursday morning. The legislation got its first airing Monday during an hour-long House subcommittee meeting and it cleared the House Judiciary Committee Monday afternoon on a 13-8 vote.
Representative Brian Meyer, a Democrat from Des Moines, said Republicans should be addressing other priorities like housing and child care.
“I give you credit, when you want to move quick on culture wars, you guys move like a flash,” Meyer said during the House Judiciary Committee Monday afternoon. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
All but one Republican on the House Judiciary Committee voted for the bill. All the Democrats on the panel voted no.
“When you love folks in the LGBTQ community, these kinds of bills make you sick to your stomach because this bill is legalizing discrimination against vulnerable folks,” Representative Lindsay James, a Democrat from Dubuque, said.
Republican Representative Steven Holt of Denison, the bill’s flood manager, said having gender identity listed in the Iowa Civil Rights Act elevates the rights of transgender Iowans above others.
“Liberal Democrats have bought into an ideology that erases women. Liberal Democrats who once championed women’s rights and helped forge women’s sports and Title IX…are now perfectly O.K. with erasing women,” Holt said. “That men should be allowed to invade the bathrooms and private spaces of biological females, thereby erasing their rights — that’s the discrimination that’s happening right now.”
Hundreds of people gathered in the Capitol yesterday to protest the bill. They shouted, “Shame!” at Republicans who voted for it.
It’s possible the bill could pass both the House and Senate before the end of the week.
