Headline: Des Moines Register, 2/28/2025
Brianne Pfannenstiel reports on when Iowa looked forward:
When the Iowa Legislature voted to outlaw discrimination against gay and transgender Iowans in 2007, it was the proudest day of Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell’s career. The Democrat had worked hard to shepherd the bill through the House of Representatives, where Democrats' slim majority did not guarantee its passage.
She knew that removing proposed protections for transgender Iowans would have helped smooth the bill’s passage. Her notebooks from the time still are scrawled with facts and missives about what it would mean to add “gender identity” as a protected class into the state’s Civil Rights Act.
“But our advocates wanted it in,” she said. “They wanted to do it right in the first place, and so we worked until we got that.”
Eventually, nine House Republicans joined in helping Democrats to push the bill over the finish line in a rare feat of bipartisanship — protections for trans Iowans intact.
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