Iowa Legislature

Legislators on an Iowa Senate subcommittee advanced a bill Tuesday that would remove exemptions to the state’s obscenity laws for libraries and schools, a move opponents say could open libraries up to lawsuits and would be logistically difficult for small libraries to protect against.

Lawmakers in an Iowa House subcommittee advanced a bill that requires abortion providers to post signs and give patients information about abortion reversal procedures.

Republicans on the Iowa House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill Monday that would remove civil rights protections for transgender Iowans from state law, as a few hundred people protested the bill at the Statehouse.

Iowa is in the minority of states that offer no paid parental leave to state employees.

A federal court will rule for a second time on whether Iowa law can ban all books with sexual content from school libraries and prohibit teaching LGBTQ material in kindergarten through sixth grade.

The proposed bill would require school districts to adopt a policy banning the use of personal electronic devices — including cell phones, video game devices and portable media players — during instructional time. The bill would apply to public, charter and innovation zone schools.

The House Higher Education Committee has honed in on standardizing general education requirements, banning schools from requiring DEI courses and preventing accreditors from penalizing colleges for following state law.

Iowa is not among the 34 state, plus the District of Columbia, that have laws restricting SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.

The head of the Iowa National Guard asked legislators to improve the Iowa National Guard Service Scholarship and add exceptions to the state’s chronic absenteeism law for high school military recruits and members.

The disruption experienced during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic has many legacies, one of them a decline in school attendance.