Move to strip gender rights from Iowa's civil rights law rejected by legislators

Source: Associated Press

Move to strip gender rights from Iowa’s civil rights law rejected by legislators

BY HANNAH FINGERHUT
Updated 4:37 PM EST, January 31, 2024

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa lawmakers on Wednesday declined to advance a bill that would have stripped gender identity from the state’s civil rights law, a proposal that opponents said could have subjected LGBTQ+ Iowans to discrimination in education, housing and public spaces.

The bill has been floated in recent years without success but reached the first step in Iowa’s lawmaking process Wednesday, when it was rejected by three members of a House Judiciary subcommittee. As they discussed the measure, LGBTQ+ advocates outside the room cried out: “Trans rights are human rights.” Two of the subcommittee members are Republican and one is a Democrat.

Not every state has explicit protections for a person based on their gender identity, but opponents of the bill suggested that removing such already existing protections from a state’s anti-discrimination law would have stood out in an already historic period of anti-trans laws in Republican-led statehouses.

Republican House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl — who is not a member of the subcommittee and didn’t take part in the vote — said Wednesday that he doesn’t think it would be the “wise choice” to break open established civil rights code “whether you agree with all of it or not.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/iowa-civil-rights-law-gender-identity-117bd2cf7cff8a1bdbf8a7727b27a0d4