Action alert from OneIowa:

They weren’t satisfied with their attacks on LGBTQ youth in Iowa schools K-12, so now they’ve moved up to higher education.

Late last night, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee introduced HF731, a massive budget bill that would fund educational institutions across our state from kindergarten through grad school. Unfortunately they chose to add a last second attack to DEI offices as well (Division V), and then quickly advanced the bill through both subcommittee and full committee less than 8 hours after introduction. Senate Republicans quickly filed a conforming amendment of their own doing the same thing.

We need you to email your Iowa legislators now and tell them to remove Division V of the bill and pass a clean budget to fund our educational institutions.

We know where the language in this bill is headed. It creates an immediate freeze on all DEI staff and programming, and then requires universities to submit a report to the legislature which will then be used to defund and abolish those offices. We know this because it comes on the heels of HF616, a failed proposal that would’ve banned DEI offices at all of Iowa’s public universities.

Our advocacy on this is working, and we’ve already garnered major concessions. Keep the pressure up and email your legislators today.

The 2023 legislative session could be over as soon as this week. Don’t give up now. Keep raising your voice with us until they stop harming LGBTQ Iowans.

Keenan Crow
Director of Policy and Advocacy