Protesters gathered in the Iowa State Capitol rotunda Feb. 12, 2024 as lawmakers held a public hearing on a bill that would allow transgender people to be excluded from sex-segregated spaces and require transgender person’s sex at birth to be listed on their birth certificate, as well as any gender reassignment treatment. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
LGBTQ+ students, parents and advocates said Iowa would allow “state-sanctioned bullying” if legislation is passed preventing schools from disciplining students and staff for not using the preferred name or pronouns for a student.
The legislation would prohibit school districts and charter schools from taking disciplinary action against staff or other students — including termination of employment, detention or expulsion, and written or verbal reprimands — for using the legal name of a student, as listed on their school records, or for using incorrect pronouns to address a student. The bill was also discussed in the 2024 legislative session but did not advance to floor debate.
Transgender students and parents told senators at a subcommittee meeting Thursday that Senate File 8 will allow for intentional discrimination against transgender students and would lead to an increase in bullying.
Berry Stevens, a 14-year-old student, said they, alongside other LGBTQ+ youth, have been sharing their stories at the Statehouse for three years as Republican lawmakers passed legislation relating to transgender students.
“One thing we have in common are stories of harassment from our peers using our legal names or pronouns, and many of our stories share topics of struggle with mental health or even suicide, in part due to that harassment,” Berry Stevens said. “Time and time again, your actions like this bill have shown that you either don’t believe us or you don’t care.”
Stevens was joined by their mother, the Rev. Brigit Stevens, who said the legislation would override parental choice by allowing teachers to choose to ignore a parent’s directive to address their child by a name different from their legal name.
Stevens pointed to a law signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2023 that requires schools to notify parents if their child requests to use a different name or pronouns than they were given at birth, as well as stating school staff cannot knowingly provide “false or misleading” information on a student’s gender identity to their family. This law means that students who use a different name or pronouns at school have approval from their parents to do so, a process Rev. Stevens said their family went through.
“The bill says that they don’t have to honor my parental rights to call my child by their chosen name,” Stevens said. “I don’t care if the child’s teachers or anyone else dislikes my child’s name or pronouns. I don’t care if they disagree with my parental rights to support my child. I care that you keep those thoughts inside your head — quiet thoughts, as they say in school — and keep my child safe by using their chosen name and pronouns.”
Chuck Hurley, vice president of The Family Leader, a conservative Christian organization, said the measure was needed to prevent lawsuits, pointing to settlements in Ohio and Virginia reached between school districts and teachers who refused to use transgender students’ preferred name or pronouns.
Supporters of the bill also said the measure would ensure that people are not “compelled” to address a person by a name or pronouns that goes against their religious beliefs — and argued that there were instances of students being bullied for using the wrong name or pronouns of their teachers or peers. Jeff Pitts, a lobbyist for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, said the measure would prevent “an individual from being bullied into violating his or her conscience, or from being coerced into an acceptance of gender identity ideology.”
“It protects people from politics,” Pitts said. “Schools ought not punish people, be they teachers, students or other folks, for simply utilizing someone’s legal name or name of record.”
Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids, said as a teacher, she believes teachers should not bring their personal beliefs, religious or political, into the classroom.
“If somebody’s coming into a classroom and intentionally calling somebody other than what they want to be called, that is bullying, and they should be reprimanded,” Donahue said. “… Teachers should be reprimanded if they cannot do their job with fidelity by protecting and treating all people in their classroom with dignity, period. And to use the good book to bully kids is … unconscionable.”
Sen. Jesse Green, R-Boone, called the bill a “teachers’ rights” measure to protect educators’ First Amendment rights.
“The Constitution and the First Amendment protects somebody’s right to speak and also not to speak,” Green said. “This bill here is making that crystal clear. We have, a couple years ago, we passed a bill that was in regards to parental rights, and now this bill is in regards to teachers’ rights.”
The bill passed through the subcommittee with 2-1 support. A House subcommittee advanced the companion to this legislation, House File 80, on Tuesday.