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DES MOINES — Some proposed state laws were stopped this week by the first key legislative deadline for Iowa state lawmakers in 2025.
But hundreds of bills remain eligible for further consideration as Iowa lawmakers continue their work for the next two months.
The end of this week is the first legislative “funnel” of the 2025 session of the Iowa Legislature. The funnel deadlines are created to gradually narrow lawmakers’ focus as they progress through each legislative session.
For the first funnel, most policy bills must advance through the first two legislative steps — approved by a subcommittee and full committee — to remain eligible for the remainder of the session.
Bills that do not reach that benchmark by the prescribed date — Friday, in this case — are considered “dead” and not eligible for further consideration this year.
While the first funnel deadline of 2025 is technically Friday, lawmakers typically do not conduct legislative work on most Fridays during the session — and do not plan to this Friday.
The funnel deadline does not apply to bills dealing with state spending or tax policy; those can be introduced at any time. And legislative leaders have multiple procedural tools at their disposal if they wish to resurrect a “dead” bill.
This is the ninth consecutive year in which Republicans have possessed complete control of the state lawmaking process. They have agenda-setting majorities in both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate to go along with Republican Kim Reynolds in the governor’s mansion.
Only one new law thus far
Republicans this year have advanced hundreds of bills, but only one piece of legislation has been approved by both chambers of the Iowa Legislature and signed into law: the removal of gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Reynolds signed that into law last week.
Statehouse Republicans argued the change was needed in part to protect new laws they passed in recent years — prohibiting transgender girls from playing in girls sports and transgender girls from using girls bathrooms in public schools — that may be struck down by Iowa’s courts if gender identity remained a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. They pointed to a recent lawsuit in which a transgender student at North Liberty High School is suing the Iowa City Community School District for its enforcement of the state’s bathroom law. The lawsuit argues the bathroom law violates the protections for gender identity in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.
When asked what was his message to transgender Iowans who feel their state government is hostile to them, House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican from New Hartford, told reporters Thursday, “I think that if you look at this last election, this fall, every campaign ad, whether it was in the most purple, blue, red districts that we made significant investments on, we said we were going to do whatever we could to protect girls’ sports. We were going to protect our bathroom bills that we had passed. For us, it was about making sure that we were following through with things that we would protect, and we just reached the point where we felt that they could no longer coexist (with civil rights protections for transgender Iowans).”
While not related to the first funnel, lawmakers missed another deadline: their self-imposed deadline to establish public K-12 school funding for the next school year during the first 30 days of the legislative session. That deadline passed in mid-February, and lawmakers finished funnel week still without setting school funding.
Senate Republicans approved a 2 percent increase in general state funding for the 2025-2026 school year, which matches Reynolds’ proposal. House Republicans approved a 2.25 general state funding increase, plus another $22.6 million in general aid to assist schools with inflationary costs.
Democrats in both chambers proposed a 5 percent increase.
Democrats criticize Republicans’ agenda
Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, a Democrat from Windsor Heights and the House Minority Leader, said statehouse Democrats in the first two months of the session proposed legislation that they believe would lower costs for Iowans and charged the agenda-setting Republicans with focusing on anything but.
“We are, of course, frustrated because so many of the bills that have passed, and there have been so many, are focused on anything but lowering costs for Iowa families,” Konfrst said Thursday during a press conference at the Iowa Capitol. “We’ve put forward legislation to make housing more affordable, health care more affordable, and child care more affordable. None of those moved forward. No efforts to do that, move forward.”
Democrats also expressed relief at some Republican proposals that did not survive the first funnel.
Sen. Janice Weiner, a Democrat from Iowa City and the Senate Minority Leader, said she is relieved that a proposal in the Senate to prohibit mRNA vaccines from being administered in Iowa was not advanced. Weiner said she also was glad a proposal to eliminate a voter-approved trust fund for outdoors, recreation and natural resources and replace it with another state fund to pay down taxes did not survive the first funnel.
“I mean, I’d love to see that (natural resources trust fund) funded, too, but I’m happy that that didn’t happen,” Weiner said.
House Republicans address higher education, pipelines
Grassley highlighted the work of House Republicans’ new committee dedicated specifically to higher education — previously in the House and still in the Senate, one committee manages all legislation relevant to education from preschool through college. The new committee has introduced a spate of bills directed at Iowa’s public, private and community colleges and universities — including several going further to limit diversity, equity and inclusion on the campuses and others imposing new mandates around what can and should be taught.
House Republicans also again approved a series of bills related to carbon capture pipelines, landowner rights and eminent domain use. They have passed similar bills in the past, only to see them shelved by their Republican colleagues in the Senate.
This year, several pipeline bills are moving in the Senate, giving Grassley hope the two chambers might agree on something they can both approve and send to Gov. Kim Reynolds.
“Obviously we passed out some of those proposals, some new proposals as well as some other things that we’ve even looked at in the past, this session. From the pipelines perspective, we’re going to continue to push forward again,” Grassley told reporters Thursday at the Iowa Capitol. “I would be very hopeful that we can find some common ground on some of those issues from the Senate. If we’re unable to achieve that, I still think our caucus wants to move forward. But it would be nice to be able to do that with some agreements (with the Senate) in place.”
The second legislative funnel deadline is Friday, April 4. By that date, all bills must be approved by either the full Iowa House or Senate and then advanced through a committee in the opposite chamber.
Last-day deadline drama
A few proposals that garnered a lot of attention fell by the legislative wayside Thursday, the last day lawmakers met ahead of this week’s deadline.
A proposal that would have prohibited unauthorized camping on public lands — a move critics argued would have criminalized homelessness — did not survive the funnel.
House Study Bill 286 was pulled from the House Judiciary Committee agenda Thursday by committee chair Rep. Steven Holt, a Republican from Denison who just the day prior signed off on advancing the bill out of subcommittee to the full committee for further consideration.
“There’s a lot of work on that legislation that needs to be done,” Holt said Thursday, adding “but it was a good discussion.”
On Wednesday, Holt advocated for advancing the legislation — over the objections of advocates for people experiencing homelessness, who said the bill would exacerbate difficult conditions unsheltered Iowans already face due to a lack of affordable housing as wages fail to keep pace with the rising cost of housing and living, as well as the lack of access to health care and mental health resources.
“There was no intention to criminalize homelessness or anything of the kind, but rather to try to create a scenario in which people would be better cared for and be given more opportunities to be in shelters,” Holt said Thursday.
Under the proposal, individuals who refuse to leave after receiving a warning and an offer for shelter or services would have faced a misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of $105 to $855. It also would have allowed cities and counties to use public dollars to establish sites on designated areas of public property to be used for public camping by people experiencing homelessness.
The designated areas would have been required to include safety and security measures; sanitization measures, including clean and running water; a restroom; a shower and access to treatment for substance use disorders and mental health.
Another bill that did not survive the funnel would have prohibited any vaccine from being administered, sold or distributed in Iowa unless the manufacturer waived federal immunity from a lawsuit over injury.
House File 712 was pulled from the House Judiciary Committee agenda Thursday. A similar bill, Senate File 360, also failed to reach the necessary threshold of legislative support to survive the funnel.
The Senate bill started as a proposal that would have made it a crime to administer gene-based, or mRNA vaccines. But after receiving subcommittee approval on Monday, that bill was not passed out of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee later in the week.
Immigration and local law enforcement bill advances
The House Judiciary Committee did on Thursday advance legislation under which Iowa law enforcement officers could be charged with a felony for failing to comply with state immigration laws.
House Study Bill 285 would make it a Class D felony for law enforcement officers, including county sheriffs, who “knowingly and intentionally” fail to comply with federal immigration officers. A Class D felony is punishable by up to five years in jail and a fine between $1,025 and $10,245.
Officers, sheriffs and deputies convicted of the offense also would lose their certification from the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy.
Holt said he intends to amend the bill to lower the penalty to a serious misdemeanor.
Last month, Winneshiek County Sheriff Dan Marx, a Republican, announced in a social media post that he would not comply with non-warrant immigration detainers requested by federal immigration enforcement.
Opponents said the bill imposes severe penalties on law enforcement for failing to provide “reasonable or necessary” enforcement assistance to federal immigration officers, which can be open to broad interpretation and lead to officers being jailed for misunderstandings, miscommunication or lack of resources to provide enforcement assistance.
Rep. Lindsay James, a Democrat from Dubuque, said the bill would complicate ongoing federal immigration efforts and make it even more difficult to recruit and retain law enforcement officers in Iowa.
Holt cited tragic murders involving immigrants not authorized to be in the country that have grabbed national headlines — including victims Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray — and advocated for the bill’s provisions to ensure public safety.
Maya Marchel Hoff of the Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
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