Iowa Supreme Court Finds State Discriminated Against Trans Employee
metroweekly.comfiled suit in Polk County court, claiming that the Department of Corrections discriminated against him based on his gender identity, in violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act.Vroegh’s case was the first jury lawsuit brought under the Iowa Civil Rights Act since it was amended in 2007 to include protections for gender identity.
In February 2019, an Iowa jury found that the Department of Corrections had discriminated against Vroegh on the basis of sex and gender identity through its actions, and awarded him $120,000 in damages.
The state later appealed the jury’s verdict to the Iowa Supreme Court, which upheld the jury’s verdict on Friday.“This is a historic victory for civil rights in Iowa, because it makes real the promise of nondiscrimination protections in employment that our legislature put in place for transgender Iowans in 2007,” Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for the ACLU of Iowa, said in a statement. “Despite those longstanding protections, Mr.
Vroegh’s employer, the State of Iowa, repeatedly denied his requests to use the men’s restrooms and locker rooms consistent with his gender identity at work, and the state’s employee health insurance program excluded coverage for the medically necessary gender-affirming surgery for transgender employees, even though it covered the same procedures so long as they were not to treat gender dysphoria.“The state should have been a model for other employers in its treatment of a transgender worker, but instead blatantly discriminated against Jesse, who only ever asked to be treated the same as his coworkers,” Bettis Austen added.
