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These are some bills that cause me great concern and angst so far this session.
AEA -- HSB 542 -- I have heard from more than thousands of you advocating to keep the AEA system an equitable and collaborative system for all students, no matter where they live in Iowa. As of now, the bill did not pass the House education subcommittee and is tabled. It did move forward in the Senate, so it is still alive.
Civil Rights -- HF 2082 -- A Judiciary subcommittee on an act to define gender dysphoria as a disability and to strip gender identity as a protection in the Iowa Code on Civil Rights. The bill did not pass out of the sub-committee and these rights have been protected. There were many protesters on both of these subcommittees that happened on the same day at the same time. There was a lot of noise at the Capitol!
Civil Rights for LGBTQ+ -- HSB 649 -Tuesday morning and was brought to the entire education committee for a vote on Tuesday afternoon. This bill defines "sex" as biological sex at birth. People who are transgender would be required to get a new birth certificate and it would include their birth sex and their transitioned sex. This requires putting confidential medical information in a public document. This reminds me of putting a gold Star of David on the shirts and documents of a Jewish person to identify a certain protected group. I do not see the benefit of this bill to the state or people of Iowa. In the bill, the term "equal" does not mean "same" or "identical"; and "Separate accommodations are not inherently equal." It seems to me that the Supreme Court decided these issues of civil rights many years ago. In my opinion, this legislation, if passed, will lead to additional lawsuits for the taxpayers to pay for.
Teacher/Student Discipline - Harassment and Bullying - SF 496 from last year defined the rights of parents to notify the school if their student was to be called by a different name than is on their birth certificate. An example: Johnathan was a transitioning student, and the parents are fully supportive and complete school district forms to indicate the student will now be called Jennifer and use she/her pronouns. That bill also defines bullying and harassment and the penalties for those actions.
This week HF 2139 passed the education committee. The bill allows that if a teacher or student continues to call Jennifer by the name they knew her by last year (Johnathan) as a tactic of bullying or harassment because of the teacher's or student's religious or social beliefs, schools are prevented from taking disciplinary action against the teacher or student. This bill sanctions bullying based on failure to use the parent approved name or pronouns.
What bills have we passed or moved forward to protect kids and families? My caucus has introduced bills to raise the minimum wage, expand the Sales Tax Holiday, expand affordable child-care for child-care workers, eliminate waiting lists for Home and Community Based based-services, lower tuition for university students, reinstate the levies (library, municipal band, community centers and others) eliminated in last session's tax bill.
We still have a lot to do in the session. We cannot just focus on issues that affect a very few people. We are feeding into fear and phobia. I am having the following Community Conversations to listen to you and learn your issues:
Saturday, Feb. 10 at the Sunrise Café in Le Grand at 10:00 a.m.
Friday, Feb. 16 at the Iowa Veterans Home in the Malloy LRC at 9:30 a.m.
You may contact me at sue.cahill@legis.iowa.gov.
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Sue Cahill, a Democrat from Marshalltown,
represents District 52 in the Iowa House.