The school board in Council Bluffs, Iowa, says it won’t change its anti-bullying policy following a new state law that removed gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Code, Theodore Haley reports in the student newspaper at Abraham Lincoln High School in the city.
Illinois Central Missouri River Bridge at Council Bluffs (Shelby L. Bell/Flickr Creative Commons)Senate File 418, signed by Gov Kim Reynolds in February and effective July 1, requires school districts to comply with the revised code, though some districts have kept gender identity protections in place.
At a recent work session, the Council Bluffs board discussed the law but did not schedule a formal vote. The district’s policy does not list specific types of bullying, classifying incidents broadly as harassment, according to Tim Hamilton, chief of student family services.
“We classify it as, ‘you’re being bullied or harassed, not why,’” Theodore quoted Tim Hamilton, Chief of Student Family Services for Council Bluffs Schools, as saying in a TV news interview.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, however, has raised concerns about the new law, saying it allows for discrimination against transgender people.
The legislature’s decision to remove this protection and the Iowa Governor’s decision to sign that discriminatory bill into law was cruel. That is because they did so specifically to allow discrimination—including by the state of Iowa itself—against transgender people, a very small minority of people in Iowa.
—ACLU of Iowa, press release, June 30
