Iowa has passed a bill to eliminate all references to "gender identity" from state law while defining sex as biologically determined at birth, a move supporers say is designed to protect "the rights of women and girls.

Iowa lawmakers became the first in the nation to approve legislation removing gender identity protections from the state’s civil

Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature voted Thursday to remove gender identity as a protected class from the state’s civil rights code, sending the first-of-its-kind measure to Gov. Kim Reynolds