Iowa’s Republican governor signed into law on Friday a measure that ends state civil rights protections for transgender people, a move that L.G.B.T.Q. rights advocates said made the state the first to eliminate such broad and specific protections for transgender people.
Gov. Kim Reynolds, who had previously signed laws restricting gender-transition treatments for minors and sports participation by transgender women, said in a video statement that “before I signed this bill, the Civil Rights Code blurred the biological line between the sexes.”
The Republican-backed bill passed both legislative chambers by large margins despite protests at the State Capitol and warnings from Democrats that the measure could lead to discrimination and harassment.
“This bill creates a caste system where one group of people, Iowa trans citizens, do not have the same set of rights that we have,” State Representative Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat, said during a debate over the bill on Thursday.
The signing of the Iowa legislation comes as President Trump’s administration moves to limit official recognition of transgender identity nationally. The administration has sought to end funding for hospitals that provide gender-transition treatments to minors, to bar transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports, to bar openly transgender people from serving in the military, to house transgender women who are inmates in federal prisons with men, and to no longer reflect the gender identities of transgender people on passports.
The Iowa law defines sex based on a person’s anatomy at birth and removes gender identity from a list of protected groups that employers, businesses and landlords may not discriminate against. The bill leaves in place discrimination protections for gay and lesbian people, which were passed 18 years ago as part of the same state law that had extended protections for gender identity.
In her message about the law, Ms. Reynolds said “we all agree that every Iowan, without exception, deserves respect and dignity.” She said that she believed the new law “safeguards the rights of women and girls.”
“It is common sense to acknowledge the obvious biological differences between men and women,” the governor said. “In fact, it is necessary to secure genuine equal protection for women and girls.”
On the federal level, the Supreme Court ruled several years ago that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. Efforts by Democrats in Congress to expand the scope of those protections beyond the workplace have failed.
More than 20 states, most of them led by Democrats, have explicit employment discrimination protections for transgender people, according to information compiled by the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that supports L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
Iowa put in place civil rights protections for transgender people in 2007 in a far different political moment. Democrats, who are now outnumbered in Des Moines, controlled both legislative chambers and the governor’s office at the time.
“We send a message that Iowa is a welcoming place that values each of its citizens, whether it’s in the neighborhood or in the workplace,” Gov. Chet Culver said when he signed the protections into law.
Iowa voted twice for Barack Obama, but Mr. Trump has carried the state in the last three elections, including by a 13-point margin in 2024. Republicans have also amassed large state legislative majorities.
Ms. Reynolds and the Republican-led Legislature have used their power to write conservative priorities into Iowa law, restricting abortion, banning school library books deemed sexually explicit and allowing for state-level immigration enforcement.
Democrats have struggled to push back. In a floor speech this week, State Representative Aime Wichtendahl, a Democrat who is transgender, told her colleagues, “I transitioned to save my life,” urging them to vote down the change to the state’s civil rights code.
“This bill revokes protections to our jobs, our homes and our ability to access credit,” Ms. Wichtendahl said. “In other words, it deprives us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
Republicans said they worried that other state laws restricting transgender people, including those relating to sports participation and gender-transition treatments for minors, could be vulnerable to lawsuits if the state’s civil rights guarantees for gender identity remained.
“All these legal protections are at risk due to the inclusion of the words ‘gender identity’ in our code,” State Senator Jason Schultz, a Republican supporter of the bill, said on Thursday.
Amy Harmon contributed reporting.
