50501 Iowa Coalition, our organization partners and the people of the City of Cedar Rapids are calling on Mayor O’Donnell and the City Council to abide by Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court in 2020 (Bostock v Clayton Co.), and name Cedar Rapids a Transgender Sanctuary City. 

Cedar Rapids added gender identity as a protected class in 2007, piggy-backing on the State of Iowa. Despite the state now becoming the first in the nation to remove any civil rights protections, and despite the state’s attempts to control individual cities, the state cannot overrule federal law. The 2020 Supreme Court ruling regarding Bostock v. Clayton Co. the majority opinion, written by conservative judge Neil Gorsuch, states, “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” Despite executive orders that prevent the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from adequately defending complainants, the truth still remains. The same Civil Rights Act that protects people who are pregnant and people of color, protects people who are trans gender and gender non-conforming.

Naming Cedar Rapids a Transgender Sanctuary City will reaffirm to the transgender people of Cedar Rapids, and the rest of Iowa, that they are welcome here. That the protections established in 2007 are in line with the desires of the people of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the Nation. That we do not tolerate discrimination and we do not tolerate bullies in Des Moines making laws that directly harm our neighbors.