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Iowa State Sen. Dennis Guth (R-Hancock) has been on the frontlines trying to get a bill strengthening religious liberty in Iowa through the legislature. Due to past inaction, he’s still working on it entering the 2020 legislative session.
What was the biggest hold up in 2019?
“The House was a little squeamish on it and they wanted to restrict using government funds, Medicare funds for transgender operations,” Guth said. “The fear was that if we passed the RFRA over in the Senate, and we could’ve done that it only two days time because we already had it through committee and we could bring it up at any time, but then the House would have to go through subcommittee, committee and to the floor. That would give the unhappy opposition lots of time to pound on them. We were afraid there were too many weak votes there and we’d end up getting neither one of them if we tried to do that.”
Last year the bill made it through committee in the Iowa Senate. It passed on a partisan vote. It will have to go through committee again in 2020, but Guth is confident in those prospects.
“I’ve got practice in committee now,” he said. “If I can get it to the same committee, it’s not as scary as it was the first couple times.”
Passing a bill like RFRA won’t be possible if Republicans lose control of either chamber in the 2020 elections, which makes moving on the issue paramount.
“I think it’s an issue that would help keep us in full control if we could pass it,” Guth said. “Then we could pass some more.”
Roadblocks, though, include the business community. Guth, though, said it isn’t the entire business community. He noted a local man who is a past president of ABI, and he was “all in favor of it.”
“But ABI came out against it because there are just too many people,” Guth said. “At least 60 percent of them were opposed to the RFRA, so they kind of had to do it that way.”
Principal Financial has been a huge roadblock to RFRA passing in Iowa as well. One of Principal’s top legislative priorities was stopping any religious liberty legislation.
“I know our leadership is getting a little bit disgusted with Principal not being about business but being about social issues,” Guth said.
That said, Guth believes progress is being made on the issue in the Senate.
“I think some of the people who were only moderately behind me have gotten even stronger behind it rather than the other way around,” he said. “So that has been encouraging.”
Attorney General William Barr gave a speech on religious freedom at Notre Dame. Guth said that speech is just one example of how the Trump Administration has supported this issue.
“I think it’d be a great time to move it forward,” he said. “We’d get plenty of national support on that kind of thing. It’s not like it’s something new. It’s not like it has caused a lot of problems in a lot of other states. It’s in a lot of other states. It’s time to just push back against Principal.”
Guth wrote the bill with the assistance Iowa AG Tom Miller, a Democrat. When Bill Clinton was President, he signed a federal version of the legislation in 1993.
“It’s one small faction of Iowans who push back and they push back loud and hard,” Guth said. “I feel like we’re being bullied.”
Guth emphasized that conservatives did not pick this fight, it is a fight the Left picked.
“Unfortunately we’ve retreated too often,” he said. “We need to not retreat. Just having someone stand up, even if it doesn’t get very far, encourages some people to not give up. We just have to give people someone as a leader or something to rally behind. The average citizen really feels like they can’t do much, but they can sure get out and root for the person who does stick his neck out and does take a stand.”
Legislators may need a bit of a nudge from their constituents if they want to see RFRA passed in Iowa.
“I’d love to see more positive response from constituents on RFRA,” Guth said. “I’d like to hear the average citizen saying they’re glad somebody is doing this. It’s an important thing. A fair number of us are pretty committed to RFRA, but the problem is if you don’t have 26, it doesn’t matter. We can get pretty close to that number. We may have that number. But it’s like nobody extra.”
Guth added that he thinks Senate Republican leadership is “on the right side” of the issue.
“We don’t have a problem with them,” he said. “I’ve been very impressed with Sen. (Charles) Schneider here. He’s willing to stand on his own convictions.”
In closing, Guth quoted George Orwell.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
