Iowa must pay $85K... troopers blocked trans students from Capitol restrooms

[Jessica_Rose]

Iowa must pay $85K because state troopers blocked trans students from Capitol restrooms

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/iowa-must-pay-85k-because-state-troopers-blocked-trans-students-from-capitol-restrooms/

Greg Owen (14 Sep 2025)

Six months after Iowa removed gender identity as a protected class from its civil rights laws, the state now must pay $85,000 to LGBTQ+ students ejected from the Iowa Capitol in 2020, among them trans students who were denied access to the building's bathrooms.

Iowa Safe Schools, an LGBTQ+ youth advocacy group, sponsored the visit of about 150 Iowa students and chaperones to the Capitol to meet with legislators in 2020. The group's then-executive director, Nate Monson, told the Iowa Register that, at the time, Iowa State Patrol troopers told several transgender students they couldn't use one of the bathrooms and had to use a gender-neutral restroom instead.

"I went up to the trooper and said, 'No, that's not what the law says,'" Monson said. "The civil rights code includes gender identity. He told me it did not. Then I told him yes, it did. And he said, 'Well it doesn't include bathrooms.'"

The students were then told to leave the Capitol altogether, that they had been banned from the Capitol grounds, and they would be arrested if they returned.

Under terms of a settlement agreement — filed in July and approved by the Iowa State Board of Appeals on Tuesday — the state will pay the students and group leaders to settle the case without admitting any wrongdoing.

In a letter to the Board of Appeals, state attorney Jeffrey Peterzalek made it a point to say that the plaintiffs' legal claims "would now not be allowed" under the updated Civil Rights Act.