The IOWA legislator was the first in the nation on Thursday to approved the laws to remove the protection of gender identity from the state’s state rights code of the state. Despite the massive protests of opponents who say that transgender people could expose discrimination in numerous areas of life.
The measure raced through the legislative procedure after it was first introduced last week. The Senate was the first to be approved on Thursday, followed by the house less than an hour later. Five Republicans of the Republicans were right with all the democrats.
Hundreds of 2LGBTQ+ supporters headed to the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday, waved signs “Transights are human rights” and sing slogans, including “No Hass in our state!”
There was a difficult police presence in which state troops were stationed for the rotunda. The opposition to the draft law was huge because 2LGBTQ+ people and their allies appear in droves to defend the human rights of transgender and non-binary people. Of the 167 people who registered to testify in front of a 90-minute public hearing in front of a house committee, everyone was against the legislation except 24.
Demonstrators who were the coordination from the House Gallery and “Shame!” When the chamber postponed. Many warned Iowa State Rep. Steven Holt, who managed the bill and made a violent defense about it before she passed.
The legislation would eliminate gender identity as a protected class from the state’s civil rights law and expressly define feminine and male as well as the gender, which is from now on is considered a synonym for sex and “not as a synonym or brief expression for the identity of the sexes, the gender experienced, gender expression and gender role.
The measure would be the first legislative measure that eliminates the protection of non -discrimination based on gender identity, said Logan Casey, director of political research at the Movement Advancement Project, a 2LGBTQ+ Rights Think Tank.
Followers of the change say that the current law that people can pass to a different gender that they believe that they are wrong and transgender women access to space such as bathing rooms, changing rooms and sports teams, of whom they believe they should be reserved for people who were assigned to women at birth.
“The Iowa legislator for the future of our children and our culture has an interest and a solemn responsibility to work for an unchangeable truth,” said Holt.
2LGBTQ+ People and Human Rights Attorney say that there is no justification for the deduction of civil rights protection from trans- and non-binary people.
“If this draft draft goes away, many fundamental living needs that Iowans take for granted to be able to access transgender -Iowans much more difficult to access”, Masch Mowitz, Executive Director of 2LGGBTQ+ ADVocacy Group One Iowa Action, said last month.
“Landlords will be legal to you to refuse to rent an apartment. Banks can refuse a car loan, and you can refuse hotels for no other reason than because you are transgender. This legislation gives the ability to discriminate your thumb on the scales of American dream.”
The Rep. Aime Wichtendahl from Iowa was the last democrat that spoke out against the law on Thursday, and became emotional when she offered her personal story as a transgender woman and said: “I went over to save my life.”
“The purpose of this law and the purpose of every anti-trans law is to further extinguish us from public life and stigmatize our existence,” said Wichtendahl. “The sum of all anti-transfer and anti-LGBTQ calculation is to make our existence illegal.”
“Protection measures should … strengthened, not be removed”
The legislation now goes to the Republican governor Kim Reynolds, who supports the efforts to limit the protection of gender identity. A spokeswoman for Reynolds declined to comment on whether she would sign the bill. If she does it, it will come into force on July 1st.
The actions of the legislators of IOWA came on the same day when the Georgia house was due to the protection of the gender from the state’s hate crime law, which was decided in 2020 after the adoption The death of Ahmaud Arbery.
The current civil rights law of IOWA protects against discrimination based on breed, color, creed, gender identity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin or disability status.
Sexual orientation and gender identity were originally not included in the state civil rights law of 1965. They were added by the democratically controlled legislator in 2007, also with the support of about a dozen republicans in both chambers.
The Republicans of Iowa say that their changes are intended to reinforce the ban on the sports participation of the state and the public bathroom access for transgender students who have been signed by Reynolds in the law.
These increasing attacks on transit rights should be a reason to strengthen protection and not to remove it, said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of Glaad on Wednesday.
“At a time when the transgender is under unprecedented attack, protection should be enforced and strengthened and not removed to encourage discrimination,” said Ellis in A statement.
“Non-discrimination laws are crucial to protect our strongest endangered and marginalized communities and ensure that nobody is treated differently because they are. What they are. This is a wake-up call for red alarms that if they can do this with trans people, all civil rights protection could be at risk,” said Ellis.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, the gender identity includes gender identity in their civil rights code to protect themselves from discrimination against living space and public places such as shops or restaurants. Some additional states do not explicitly protect against such discrimination, but are included in legal interpretations of statutes.
The Supreme Court of Iowa rejected the argument that discrimination is discriminated against gender based on gender identity.
Several laws conducted by Republicans also urge more laws this year to issue legal definitions of men and women at the birth of male and female due to the reproductive organs according to an executive regulation of US President Donald Trump.
Trump signed in a flash of executive regulations that aim at the rights of trans- and non-binary people, including orders that laid the basics for the ban on transgender people from military service and have kept away from girls’ and women’s sports competitions. Most guidelines are challenged in court.
