Transgender ‘bathroom bill’ introduced in Iowa House, though support lags

Iowa House Republicans introduced a bill Wednesday that would protect schools and businesses that choose to limit transgender people's access to restrooms.

House File 2164 seeks to rewrite portions of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which grants transgender Iowans legal protections against discrimination in education, employment, housing and other public accommodations based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Gender identity refers to the gender with which a person identifies internally, while sex is biologically assigned at birth. Transgender Iowans may choose to transition their external appearance so that it aligns with their gender identity.

“What the bill just says is that schools and businesses are allowed to take action to protect women and girls by preserving access (to toilet facilities and locker rooms) based on biological sex,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sandy Salmon, R-Janesville.

The legislation is supported by a dozen House Republicans as well as Christian conservative organization The Family Leader. But a key committee chairman said the issue is unlikely to survive a looming legislative deadline.

“We’ve got several hundred bills assigned to Judiciary, and we’re going to be looking at all of them,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Bondurant, noting that he has limited time to advance legislation out of his committee. “At this point, I don’t see that (bill) being in the top tier.”

LGBTQ community offers swift rebuke

Officials in Iowa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community offered a swift rebuke after the bill was introduced Wednesday morning.

“This is an answer in search of a problem,” said Aime Wichtendahl, the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker and a member of the Hiawatha City Council.

“The gender identity protection in the Civil Rights Act has been included for more than a decade," she said. "Has there been a problem of people harassing women in the bathrooms since then? No. This is simply a tactic of the extreme right who will use any excuse they can to harass and intimidate us out of public life.”

More: Trans in Iowa: Fighting for visibility

The argument that this type of bill protects women and girls from sexual violence is a “fallacy,” said Kerri True-Funk, associate director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Transgender women themselves are “at a high risk” for sexual violence due to their gender identity, True-Funk said.

And sexual assaults are most often perpetrated by people already known to the victim, she added.

“The scenarios that some legislators have suggested perpetuate dangerous stereotypes of strangers hiding in bathrooms or jumping out of bushes, rather than addressing the underlying issue of sexual assault head-on,” True-Funk said. “Legislation like HF 2164 does nothing to make survivors (of sexual violence) safer.”

Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, an advocacy group for LGBTQ youth, said he was “completely disheartened” lawmakers would introduce a bill that would so greatly effect such a small population.

The transgender population is estimated to be about 0.6 percent of the total population, or about 1.4 million people nationally and 18,600 in Iowa, according to The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's law school.

“What this comes down to is the far right has lost on marriage equality and on other civil rights and they are looking for ways to attack the LGBTQ community,” Monson said. “This bill is just meant to hurt, not to help Iowa’s kids, so we are going to find ways to fight this bill and support LGBTQ youth and others across the spectrum.”

What's in the bill

House File 2164 seeks to rewrite portions of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which was amended in 2007 to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

By adding gender identity as a protected class more than a decade ago, the Legislature granted transgender Iowans legal protections against discrimination in education, employment, housing and public accommodations.

The bill would amend that section of Iowa law to say that preventing individuals born into one biological sex from accessing facilities designated for the opposite biological sex — despite their gender identity — does not constitute unfair or discriminatory practice.

It also amends the portion of Iowa's civil rights code focused on education to specify that educational institutions are not required to allow individuals of one sex to access toilets or locker rooms designated for people of the opposite sex.

Salmon, who sponsored the bill, said she does not believe the changes open the door to discrimination against transgender people.

"It just allows the school or the business to be able to preserve the access based on biological sex," she said. "They can make the arrangements they want to make in their own school or their own marketplace or their own business. It’s a local control issue."

Rep. Steven Holt, R-Denison, is a co-sponsor of the legislation. He said he has four daughters and does not believe they should be sharing restrooms or other facilities with people who are biologically male.

"You can talk about people living their lives as they see fit," he said. "I get that completely. But as a parent, you tell me that I should be OK with my daughters being forced to use restroom facilities with someone that is biologically a male? I don’t accept that."

Holt said he's unsure whether the measure would gain wider support within the Republican caucus and advance through the committee process.

"I would definitely characterize it as an uphill climb, I’ll put it that way," he said.

Similar legislation introduced nationwide

Commonly known as a "bathroom bill," similar legislation has been introduced across the country in recent years.

North Carolina faced strong backlash when in 2016 the state legislature passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, also known as HB2. The law required people to use the bathroom that corresponded with the sex on their birth certificate, which is a problem for people born in states that don’t allow gender markers on birth certificates to be changed or for those who can’t afford costly sex reassignment surgery.

The law's enactment sparked outrage in both the business and entertainment worlds. PayPal and Deutsche Bank announced they would halt plans to expand their offices, according to the New York Times, and musical acts like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Maroon 5 canceled scheduled tour stops.

The NCAA threatened to re-schedule championship games planned to be held in the state, but the legislature rescinded portions of the law in time to allow the NCAA games to move forward, the Times reported.

The law proposed in Iowa only addresses repealing gender identity protections in the arenas of education and public accommodations, leaving the protection in place for employment, housing and credit.

Monson called that move “strategic,” adding that Republicans “obviously didn’t want businesses to jump into the fray” against the bill.

“In other states where these kinds of anti-trans bills are proposed and involve businesses, they speak out loudly in favor of the trans community," Monson said. "Here, they are attempting to thread that needle by only attacking transgender children at school.”

President Barack Obama's administration issued a letter in 2016 directing schools across the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

That announcement sparked fierce backlash from conservatives across the country, including in Iowa. The issue grew particularly contentious in Fairfield where discussions over transgender bathroom access became a defining issue of the local school board elections.

And although President Donald Trump rescinded those guidelines when he took office, the Iowa Department of Education says it still offers protections for Iowa's transgender students.

"We trust local school districts to make decisions on this issue in a way that ensures all students are treated with respect and dignity," spokeswoman Staci Hupp said in an email.

Holt said he believes the legislation is necessary, even though Trump has rescinded the Obama-era guidelines.

"We don’t know who’s going to be in office in Washington, D.C., a couple years from now," he said.

In 2016, there was a push in the Democrat-controlled Iowa Senate to expand Iowa's hate crimes law to include offenses committed against a person because of their gender identity or gender expression. That measure did not advance in the Republican-controlled House.

Last year, a measure rescinded local control of civil rights acts across the state. Previously, cities and counties were able to expand upon the state’s civil rights act in their local laws, but now protected classes are restricted to only those covered by the Iowa Civil Rights Act.