The Iowa Senate and House debated for several hours before passing the legislation overwhelmingly along party lines. The governor is expected to sign the bill.

Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature voted Thursday to remove gender identity as a protected class from the state’s civil rights code, sending the first-of-its-kind measure to Gov. Kim Reynolds

It pains me to see how the rights of an entire group’s people can be so quickly and easily discarded," the state's only trans lawmaker said.

While hundreds of protesters chanted and yelled in the Iowa Capitol Rotunda Monday morning, House Republicans advanced legislation that would remove gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act in an unprecedented move to repeal civil rights protections for transgender Iowans that have been in place for nearly two decades.

Iowa lawmakers became the first in the nation to approve legislation removing gender identity protections from the state's civil rights code, despite massive protests

Iowa’s Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill on Thursday that would remove gender identity as a protected class in the state’s civil rights code. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds is expected as soon as Thursday evening to sign the bill into law,