Iowa’s extreme Don’t Say Gay bill challenged in new lawsuit

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa and Lambda Legal have filed a lawsuit to block a so-called “parental rights” law that has been compared to Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Senate File 496, signed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) in May, bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in K­–12 classrooms and requires school officials to notify parents if their kids request to use pronouns or names that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth. It also bans books featuring depictions of sex acts from school libraries, but as The Hill notes, the law includes an exception for religious texts like the Bible, which has been challenged under similar policies in other states due to its sexual content.

Related:

Students in Iowa are organizing to circumvent state’s anti-LGBTQ laws

Adults may be making the laws, but since when have teenagers blindly followed the rules?

The law went into effect on July 1, but as KCRG notes, penalties for educators who violate it do not go into effect until January 1, 2024.

Stay connected to your community

Connect with the issues and events that impact your community at home and beyond by subscribing to our newsletter.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

On Tuesday, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal sued the state on behalf of LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Iowa Safe Schools and seven students and their families. Senate File 496, the suit argues, “singles out Iowa students and discriminates against them based on their sexual orientation and gender identity” in violation of their First Amendment, Equal Protection Clause, and Equal Access Act rights.

The lawsuit seeks to have the implementation of S.F. 496 blocked while the case is pending and to have the law struck down.

In a May press statement, Reynolds described the law and other education reforms as putting “parents in the driver’s seat.” But Belinda Scarrott, the parent of one of the teenage plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that S.F. 496 makes life “more perilous” for her transgender son.

“This law claims to protect parental rights, but it does the opposite,” Scarrott said. “Instead of sending my child to school and assuming he will be safe, as every parent of a cisgendered, straight child does, I spend my days worrying about what potential damage this school day might do to my child’s physical or mental well-being.”

As The Hill reports, hundreds of books have already been removed from school libraries under the new law. On Tuesday, Reynolds released a statement in response to the lawsuit, addressing only the book-banning aspect of S.F. 496 and characterizing the materials targeted by the law as “pornography.”

“Protecting children from pornography and sexually explicit content shouldn’t be controversial. The real controversy is that it exists in elementary schools,” Reynolds said.

But ACLU of Iowa staff attorney Thomas Story described S.F. 496 as “a clear violation of public school students’ First Amendment right to speak, read, and learn freely.”   

“The First Amendment does not allow our state or our schools to remove books or issue blanket bans on discussion and materials simply because a group of politicians or parents find them offensive,” Story said in a statement.

“Like it or not, sex and sexuality are parts of the teenage experience. Refusing to provide adolescents with information about it means they’ll seek out their own information — from the Internet, or from others, in ways that are significantly less safe than books reviewed by teachers or librarians,” Puck Carlson, an Iowa City high school senior and a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. “Removing books that discuss queer topics or people from our schools tells our queer students that they do not belong there, that their existence is shameful. I am not shameful.”