Iowa Lawmakers Pass Bill to Eliminate Transgender Civil Rights Protections

Iowa lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday that would end state civil rights protections for transgender people. Advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. rights said that Iowa would become the first state to remove such broad and explicit protections for trans people if the Republican-backed measure was signed into law.

The bill, which now goes to the desk of the Republican governor, passed 18 years after the state, then led by Democrats, enshrined those discrimination protections into Iowa code.

The debate this week in Des Moines, where protesters and Democrats tried without success this week to persuade Republican lawmakers to reconsider, reflected how much the discourse over transgender issues has shifted in the country, and how much Iowa has changed.

“The purpose of this bill, the purpose of every anti-trans bill, is to further erase us from public life and to stigmatize our existence,” said State Representative Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat who is transgender.

But Republicans said they were concerned that maintaining civil rights protections for gender identity would make other state laws — like those restricting gender-transition treatments for minors and sports participation by transgender women — vulnerable to legal challenges.