Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird visits KCAU 9 studio

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird stopped by the KCAU 9 studio Friday to discuss several current issues.

Bird was in town for a Republican fundraising event at Country Celebrations.

The state of Iowa is enforcing a book ban this school year. It prohibits books depicting sex acts from school libraries and classrooms. Educators are also not allowed to talk about gender identity and sexual orientation to kindergarten through 6th grade students.

Bird talked about what her office determines as appropriate for children.

“So the legislature laid out a standard, and for example, one of the problems was sexually explicit books that would be in a kids’ public school library and just making sure that that’s not something that parents have to worry about,” she said. “Those kinds of books that we couldn’t even show on a TV broadcast, a network TV broadcast, shouldn’t be in a kids’ library.”

Bird’s office says the law ensures age-appropriate books and curriculum in classrooms and school libraries.

She also discussed another law, one that bans transgender women and girls from taking part in girls’ sports in schools and higher institutions in the state. Bird says Iowa and several other states are suing the Biden administration over changes to rules governing Title IX that protect transgender students.

“We have been defending states’ laws that make sure that girls’ sports are for girls and that girls’ locker rooms are also for girls and not boys,” Bird said. “Iowa has a law just like that and other states do too and so we’ve been working with other states to support and uphold and defend those laws.”

Bird says Iowa’s law banning transgender girls from girls’ sports has not yet been challenged.

All three Siouxland states have now joined the U.S. Justice Department’s civil anti-trust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster . The suit claims the company is monopolizing markets across the live concert industry. The lawsuit is seeking to restore competition in that industry, give fans better choices at lower prices, and open venue doors for working musicians and other performing artists.

Bird says Live Nation-Ticketmaster is hurting everyone, from fans to artists.

“Ticketmaster controls 80 percent of the ticketing market, which really hurts fans and artists, and then they tie that to exclusive agreements with venues and others in a web that we believe violates state and federal anti-trust laws,” she said. “This hurts fans, this hurts artists, and if there were competition, there’d be a much better ticketing system in place.”

The lawsuit also alleges the company imposes barriers to competition, limiting the entry and expansion of its rivals.

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