Iowa Governor Removes Gender Identity Protection Civil Rights

On Feb. 28, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation making the state the first to remove anti-discrimination protections for gender identity from its civil rights code.

Senate File 418, which takes effect on July 1, removes “gender identity” as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment, wages, public accommodations, housing, education, and credit practices. The new law makes it more difficult for transgender individuals to bring claims alleging discrimination or harassment in state court. Furthermore, the amended law states that “separate accommodations are not inherently unequal.”

The governor’s signature came one day after state lawmakers approved the legislation on Feb. 27. The legislation was fast-tracked through the state legislature, passing both the Iowa House and Senate in less than a week after it was introduced on Feb. 24.

“It is common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women. In fact, it is necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls,” Reynolds said in a statement.

In recent years, Iowa has enacted laws that prevent doctors from administering gender-affirming care to individuals under the age of 18, ban transgender students from using school bathrooms that do not correspond with their sex at birth, and prohibit transgender students from participating in girls’ high school sports and women’s college athletics.

SF 418 makes several other key changes to Iowa state law regarding sex and gender, rejecting the idea of gender identity as separate from biological sex. Specifically, the law defines “sex” in statutes as “the state of being either male or female as observed or clinically verified at birth” and defines “female” and “male” based on reproductive systems that produce ova and sperm, respectively. The law further asserts that the term “gender” should be considered synonymous with sex and not “gender identity, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role.”

The law also requires birth certificates to include a designation of the sex of the person, and it removes a provision allowing for a new birth certificate to be established based on a notarized affidavit by a licensed physician stating that the person’s sex designation has changed due to surgery or other treatment.

Additionally, the bill impacts school curricula, prohibiting schools from providing any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction related to “gender theory” or sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Next Steps

Iowa is now the first state to remove protections for gender identity from its civil rights code. The Iowa law comes amid a new push at the federal level since President Donald Trump took office to define “sex” as binary and immutable, including with Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

The administration has further sought to limit the Supreme Court of the United States’ holding in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., in which the court held that the firing of an employee because of the employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity constituted unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Amid the changes in federal guidance and state law, employers should remember that Bostock remains good law and states, “The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

Christine Bestor Townsend is an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Milwaukee and Chicago. Zachary V. Zagger is senior marketing counsel with Ogletree Deakins in New York City. © 2025 Ogletree Deakins. All rights reserved. Reposted with permission.