Iowa bans cities and towns from protecting transgender citizens’ civil rights

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, signed a new law prohibiting local governments from protecting transgender Iowans’ civil rights.

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The law comes a year after Iowa became the first state in the country to roll back its civil rights code by removing gender identity from protected classes. Several progressive jurisdictions like Des Moines and Iowa City still protected trans Iowans in local ordinances, but that concerned the Republican-controlled legislature enough to pass legislation preempting local rules.

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“We just believe that locals should follow the state laws, especially when it comes to civil rights,” Reynolds said in a press conference, according to Iowa Public Radio News. “Otherwise, we have a mismatch of rights out there, and we felt that it was the right thing to do.”

But the move upset local elected officials, who said Iowa entered treacherous legal territory by prohibiting officials from protecting a class of people. Laura Bergus, an Iowa City Council member, told ABC affiliate KCRG that her city passed a resolution last year in response to the state’s civil rights rollback.

Bergus said local officials were resolved “to reinforce the fact that we had that authority and to make sure that our residents knew that discrimination on the basis of gender identity specifically was still prohibited in Iowa City.” The attorney called the new law signed by Reynolds “extreme overreach.”

Related: Iowa now allows anti-transgender discrimination

Coralville City Council member Katie Freeman told Iowa Public Radio News that preempting civil rights protections set a dangerous precedent. “The state can now take away any civil rights, and no city has a recourse for that,” Freeman said. “And unfortunately, I think there are too many people that still believe it will never happen to them, and we don’t have the luxury to believe that any longer.”

But Republican lawmakers, when passing the law, said Iowa cannot have a patchwork of different protections around the state.

“We’re not going to have everybody, and their mom decides they're going to have this civil rights code,” said Rep. Skyler Wheeler when the bill passed, according to the Des Moines Register.