Iowa Rollback of Transgender Protections Ripe for Court Fight

Iowa’s first-of-its-kind rollback of gender identity protections in its state civil rights law is poised to spur suits citing clashes with federal anti-bias laws and the Fourteenth Amendment.

The law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) on Feb. 28 follows bills passed by Iowa and other states to limit transgender children in sports and bar transgender individuals from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. The latest measure goes a step further by removing the “gender identity” protected category, which was added 18 years ago, from anti-bias laws covering employment, education, credit, housing, and public accommodations.

The change mirrors President Donald Trump’s federal actions, including a Jan. 20 executive order recognizing only two sexes.

The US Supreme Court’s interpretation of gender identity discrimination, along with other rulings curtailing states’ limitations on transgender protections, signals a path forward for legal challenges to the Iowa bill and others that may follow.

“This is the tip of the spear,” said Keenan Crow, director of policy and advocacy at One Iowa, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. The Iowa law is a “test case” for when a state removes a classification from its civil rights statutes, they said.

Twenty-two states and D.C. have explicit gender identity-based protections in employment discrimination laws, according to the Movement Advancement Project. Absent state protections, workers can turn to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which the Supreme Court ruled in the 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision protects against gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination.

Other states have affirmed protections for gender identity since Bostock. Florida’s human rights agency said in 2021 guidance it would accept these kinds of bias claims based on the high court decision, though Crow said it’s easy to imagine Florida now undoing that policy.

State action conflicting with Bostock is ripe for a challenge, employment attorneys said.

Iowa’s law “strips away” what the court said is a protected class, said Mike Elkins, founder of Florida-based MLE Law.

“States can provide greater protection, but they can’t provide less protection than what federal law prescribes,” Elkins said.

A spokesperson for the Iowa governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

State Protections

Trump’s executive order calls for the attorney general to issue guidance that corrects Bostock’s “misapplication,” echoing arguments the ruling only addressed bias based on LGBTQ+ status and didn’t extend protections to related conduct.

There are several challenges to the scope of Bostock, particularly targeting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s harassment guidance that says employers can’t misgender workers or bar them from bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

“By removing gender identity from its civil rights statute, Iowa has aligned itself with federal law and the laws of 28 other states while continuing to protect the civil rights of all,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Iowa may argue Bostock “didn’t extend that far,” but it will be difficult since unlike challenges to bathroom or pronoun policies there isn’t much debate about the ruling applying to gender identity itself, Elkins said.

The state may also cite Trump’s order to defend the law, but the president can’t overturn Bostock, he added.

Iowa was in a somewhat unique situation as a state with longstanding and explicit gender identity protections that also enacted separate legal restrictions on transgender people.

Gender identity became part of state law in 2007 when Democrats held the legislature and governorship, but Iowa has since curtailed transgender people’s access to public bathrooms and high school sports, and blocked state Medicaid funding for gender-related surgeries.

Iowa lawmakers should remove gender identity protections to resolve a conflict between the 2007 update and subsequent laws pertaining to transgender Iowans, Sen. Jason Schultz (R), a lead sponsor of the bill, said in a state senate committee hearing Feb. 26.

The success of Iowa’s consistency argument would in part turn on how a court interprets the legality of bathroom and sports statutes, said Katie Eyer, a professor at Rutgers Law School.

A similar tension could arise in Utah, which has a comparable mix of laws both protecting and restricting transgender people,she said.

Equal Protection Clause

Iowa’s law will likely be challenged under the equal protection clause of the US Constitution, which is at the core of many suits targeting state laws that restrict transgender protections and gender affirming care, civil rights attorneys said.

Arizona and New Hampshire laws to prevent transgender students in sports were temporarily barred from enforcement in rulings in separate cases citing the clause.

Iowa’s new law is broader, but runs into similar issues found in lawsuits that have so far successfully limited enforcement of other state transgender statutes, said Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center.

The Supreme Court in its 1996 Romer v. Evans decision struck down an amendment to the Colorado constitution that prohibited localities from designating “homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation” as a protected class. The court found the amendment violated the equal protection clause because it was based on animosity towards a class of individuals and not rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

Iowa’s law presents a similar situation, though it’s about a state removing its own protected class designation rather than limiting localities, Eyer said.

The core question in a potential challenge will be if Iowa’s law is targeting transgender people as a group, and if so, does the government at “the bare minimum” have a legitimate reason for the law “that’s not just based on hostility towards the group,” Eyer said.

State-level battles over loss of transgender protections have also begun implicating federal changes.

The students suing over New Hampshire’s transgender sports ban amended their complaint on Feb. 12 to also challenge Trump’s gender order.

But the order itself does not change Title VII protections, Patel said.

“It’s an executive order, it’s not intended to create law or change law,” Patel said.