Iowa senators sent a bill to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ desk Monday that would prevent local governments from providing civil rights protections to groups not protected under state law, including transgender Iowans.
Senate File 579 originally passed the Senate in 2025 with bipartisan support as a measure dealing with complaints filed with civil rights agencies and commissions, It required cases be sent to the state Office of Civil Rights if a local entity had not resolved a complaint within a year, and for complaints in which one party is a political subdivision.
But as the bill came back to the Senate floor Monday, the measure dealt with a significantly different issue related to local civil rights code. It was amended by the House Thursday to include language from House File 2541, a measure to ban local governments from enacting ordinances and other laws that provide civil rights protection that is “broader or has different categories of unfair or discriminatory practices” than the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
Democrats said the measure would remove local control and allow for discrimination against transgender Iowans. The bill comes a year after Iowa became the first state in the nation in 2025 to remove a previously protected class when the measure striking “gender identity” from the state Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, introduced an amendment to the House language Monday seeking to remove the provision restricting local civil rights laws. He said the step would recognize that the state Civil Rights Act is “a floor on civil rights, not a ceiling.”
He also told the Senate, “let’s be clear: this is about transgender rights.” If the measure passes, he said, communities across the state would not be allowed to provide protections for transgender Iowans in their community who may face discrimination for their gender identity when attempting to find housing, make purchases or seek employment.
There are currently 14 Iowa cities, alongside the unincorporated areas of Johnson County, that provide local protections against discrimination on the basis of “gender identity.”
Quirmbach asked senators who voted in favor of the 2025 law “to take another think about this, not necessarily to reverse your decision from last year, but at least to allow for the fact there may be some difference of opinion in certain of our communities.”
Senate Democrats’ amendment was defeated, and the House proposal was approved. Sen. Scott Webster, R-Bettendorf, echoed House Republicans’ arguments in support of the bill, saying the measure will provide uniformity in civil rights cases.
“This amendment is to bring the entire state under one umbrella, one basic premise, so that there’s not confusion going from city to city on how this works,” Webster said.
Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner said she had a hard time understanding how the bill would help the Legislature address any of the issues Iowans have said they want lawmakers to tackle, like health care, child care costs and housing affordability. She also said she believed state lawmakers would object to similar constraints being enacted on them by the federal government.
“It’s doing to local government what the federal government actually does not do to state government — because federal civil rights law is the floor, not the ceiling,” Weiner said. “This bill would declare that state law is the ceiling, and I don’t think that we in the state Legislature would take kindly to the federal government doing that to us. … We’ve seen time after time the majority party — for reasons I honestly cannot fathom, other than maybe it’s politically convenient — passes bills that curtail local control and passes bills that take rights away, legally punching down on a tiny group of Iowans.”
Webster said state lawmakers have chosen to override “Home Rule” in many other instances, pointing to measures approved with bipartisan support like a measure on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). He said the point of Home Rule, an amendment in the Iowa Constitution, is to fill “gaps” left by the state government.
“Home Rule was created to begin with because the Legislature, the people who wrote our Constitution and worked on all that, knew that they couldn’t possibly think of all the laws,” Webster said. “So Home Rule basically says where a state law doesn’t exist, you have the availability to kind of fill in the gaps. We’re a part-time legislature, not here all the time. Those gaps, in some cases, are overblown by local governments. … We have to look at those areas where those local governments are going too far and taking over people’s freedoms, and we have to fill that gap that’s been left for years.”
Webster said when it comes to the conversation on “whether or not transgender people have rights in Iowa,” he believed all Iowans are guaranteed protections under Article One of the Iowa Constitution, which states “All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights.”
“The conversation around civil rights is all men and all women — everybody fits within those civil rights. Everybody,” Webster said. “To outline and to create outliers and small pockets doesn’t make sense with ‘all men’ and ‘all women’ within our civil rights.”
The amended bill was approved in a 29-16 vote, and goes to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ desk for final approval.
One Iowa, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, linked the measure with other bills advanced by Iowa Republicans in 2026, including the measure removing affirmative action reporting and planning requirements from a variety of state and local entities.
“The Iowa GOP has once again opted for erasing the civil rights of Iowans rather than passing meaningful legislation to make all our lives better,” One Iowa Executive Director Max Mowitz said in a statement. “… This legislature’s motto seems to be ‘our liberties we prize and their rights we will constrain.’ This is sure to be a shameful period in Iowa history, and we cannot wait until more fair-minded legislators replace those who have shown nothing but contempt for individual rights.”