South Dakota
Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed an anti-transgender bill, KDLT reports:

A bill that’s caused a lot of controversy and put South Dakota in the national spotlight with LGBT advocates will not become law.

Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed House Bill 1008, which would have required public school students to use bathrooms that match their gender assigned at birth.
“I’m just so happy,” says ACLU Policy Director Libby Skarin. She says the Governor’s decision is positive for the state.
“This sends a strong message to everyone in South Dakota that discrimination is not tolerated,” says Skarin.
But not everyone is sharing the same feeling.
“It’s disappointing,” says District 4 Representative Fred Deutsch.
Rep. Deutsch sponsored House Bill 1008, and says the proposal was intended to be non-discriminatory and provide privacy for all public school students.

Conservatives were livid that the Republican governor would veto such a bill.

The Daily Signal, a publication of the anti-LGBT Heritage Foundation, led with the inaccurate title: South Dakota GOP Governor Has No Problem With Boys in Girls’ Locker Rooms:

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, officially has no problem with boys in girls’ locker rooms. There’s no other way to say it. Special interests and big businesses effectively lobbied the governor to veto a good bill because of the threats they made. Welcome to cultural cronyism at the bathroom.

The right-wing Federalist offered the title South Dakota’s Governor Tucks Tail And Runs From LGBT Mafia:

South Dakota’s Dennis Daugaard is the latest in a string of craven Republican governors to bow down to the gay mafia and the corporate cronies it controls. The other day Daugaard vetoed legislation that would have allowed the state’s public schools to continue the standard practice of separate bathroom and locker room facilities for males and females.
Next on the hit list is Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who is having the language changed in legislation meant to protect freedom of conscience for citizens whose beliefs about marriage or sex don’t align with the beliefs assigned by the gay mafia.

The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips said that Daugaard made a compelling case for conservatives to reject anti-transgender legislation:

Daugaard’s argument didn’t necessarily weigh in on the morality of requiring students to use the bathroom of their biological gender. Rather, he vetoed the bill because he said state government doesn’t need to be stepping into what is really a local school issue.
It’s a conservative reason to support — or at least not oppose — a cause that is mostly championed by liberals. Daugaard’s conservative framing of so-called “bathroom bills” may be just what LGBT advocates need to swing what’s become a heated cultural battle on transgender rights in their favor.

The Argus Leader notes that the religious right is threatening to sue school districts in South Dakota that are gender-inclusive:

Supporters of a bill that would have barred transgender students from using bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex said in the wake of Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s veto there could be legal action.
The bill’s supporters said lawsuits could be imminent in school districts that allow transgender students to use bathrooms of the gender with which they identify. Currently, school districts across the state accommodate transgender students at a local level.
While the papers hadn’t been filed Wednesday, the bill’s sponsors and lobbyists for conservative Christian groups said they expected some South Dakota residents would oppose local policies that allow transgender students unrestricted access to restrooms, locker rooms and shower facilities.
“I just find that South Dakota values are not such that we want boys and girls in the same locker rooms,” Sen. Brock Greenfield, R-Clark said.

Three anti-LGBT bills have died at the South Dakota Capitol, but KSFY notes that one more is still to be heard:

Advocates for transgender students say Tuesday was a big win after Governor Daugaard vetoed a bill that would require transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex.
But their eyes are still on the legislature, waiting for what they call the last discriminatory bill to be heard in a senate committee.
HB1112 would dissolve the transgender policy the South Dakota High School Activities Association put in place last November and would require transgender students to play on the team that matched the gender they were born, not the one them identify with.
During this year’s legislative session a package of bills was introduced that many LGBT advocates found discriminatory.
All of them have failed except for one, HB1112. It’s a bill that would require transgender students to play on teams that match the gender they were born.
“Not allowing transgender student to participate in those activities with the gender that they identify as, is going to be detrimental,” Center for Equality president Thomas Christiansen said.

The Washington Post wonders if the meeting between Daugaard and transgender students made a difference in the veto:

Did meeting transgender activists lead South Dakota’s governor to veto bathroom law?
“The goal was to go in there and humanize and give a face to the people who he potentially could be impacting,” Heathscott said. Shortly after the meeting, she said she believed the governor was listening.
“I think he was moved. I hope so,” Heathscott said.
Daugaard vetoed the bill a week later. In his letter to the state House of Representatives, he wrote that he believed schools, not the state, were best equipped to decide how to accommodate transgender students. Creating a state mandate could open schools to litigation, since the Obama administration has taken the position that bathroom restrictions constitute sex discrimination.

Republicans attempted to override Daugaard’s veto late last week, but that effort failed, the Argus Leader reports:

Roll up the rainbow flags. The battle is over, for this session anyway.
The culture war at the Capitol reached a climax and then came to an abrupt end Thursday as the House of Representatives tried and failed to resurrect a transgender bathroom bill.
The measure, which Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed Tuesday, would have barred transgender students from bathrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms that don’t match their biological sex. Transgender students who objected would’ve been required to submit a request to their school for a “reasonable accommodation.”
After passionate debate, the chamber fell short of a two-thirds vote needed to override Daugaard’s veto. Thirty-six voted to override the veto and 29 voted to concur.
The bill’s dramatic death and the demise of another bill Thursday that would have barred transgender athletes from playing on sports teams of the gender with which they identify marked the end of a perceived legislative affront on the transgender and LGBT community in South Dakota.

The Associated Press reported that the fight against the anti-transgender bill helped the transgender community in South Dakota to organize:

Transgender-rights advocates say a legislative session spent successfully fending off several bills that targeted transgender people in South Dakota forged a more-visible community better prepared for future clashes at the Capitol.
A bill vetoed this week that thrust South Dakota into the national spotlight would have required transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match sex at birth. The House failed Thursday to override the veto, though the measure’s sponsor suggested supporters come back with a “better, stronger bill.”
A group of transgender people is establishing a new organization that would work with other LGBT-rights groups as a result of the legislative onslaught this session. The group would help give transgender people a platform to share their stories to raise their profile with other South Dakota residents, said Tamara Jeanne Urban, a 62-year-old transgender woman from Sioux Falls who is helping organize the effort.
A “powerful” strategy for transgender advocates has been putting a human face on an abstract concept that people don’t understand, said Terri Bruce, a transgender man expected to be part of the new organization.
Bruce, 52, took that approach this year when he opposed the measures, working to build relationships with lawmakers, including Republicans who ultimately supported the bathroom bill. He now considers some them “unlikely friends.”
“All of these people I met recently who didn’t know transgender people can say they know a transgender person, and that ripples out,” Bruce said.

Out Sports profiled a rodeo cowboy who came out in South Dakota:

Despite fear, young gay rodeo cowboy came out to open arms in rural South Dakota
Growing up gay in a rural ranch community made me who I am today.
I am emotionally strong, shamelessly confident and relatively successful. That doesn’t mean I didn’t struggle along the way. Actually, ‘struggle’ is an understatement. ‘Struggle’ implies the typical high school experience — balancing acne, popularity, sports, grades and parental control.
The ‘struggle’ I speak of was an internal battle so fierce and destructible I was frequently left with severe nausea. I hated myself on a fundamental level. Before I could face my peers every day, I had to face myself. Perhaps the worst part was not being able to talk to anyone about it, not even my best friend. Even if I trusted someone enough to carry the secret capable of ending life as I knew it, I couldn’t say it out loud. Saying it out loud would make it true. “I’m gay.” I wanted nothing more than for those unspeakable words to be false.

Iowa
Republicans continued what has been characterized as a witch hunt against an anti-bullying conference, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports:

Members of an Iowa House committee that reviews the performance of state agencies clashed Wednesday over the scope of its authority to compel testimony.
The dispute arose when the House Government Oversight Committee returned to the subject of a 2015 anti-bullying conference that allegedly provided students with sexually explicit information.
Some members of the committee are calling for an investigation of the use of tax dollars to register middle and high school students and use school vehicles to transport them to and from the conference.
The annual Iowa Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning) Youth was sponsored by Iowa Safe Schools. The conference has no connection to state government.
Its executive director, Nate Monson, refuses to meet with the committee on the advice of his attorney. That rankled Chairman Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, and prompted a debate among members on whether the committee can compel a private citizen to testify.
Defense attorney Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, said she would advise a client “to refuse to appear in front of a panel that has no legal authority over him.”

Radio Iowa noted that the hearing devolved into a catfight:

One committee member today used the word “catfight” to describe this debate. Members of the House Government Oversight Committee are quarreling about the panel’s power to force Iowans to testify under oath in a statehouse hearing.
Representative Mary Wolfe, a Democrat from Clinton, is a lawyer. “The concept that any legislative committee has some sort of carte blanche to compel private people to come before them and answer questions about issues that are in no way related to government activity, I find that really concerning,” Wolfe said.
Republicans on the committee have been investigating complaints about X-rated material presented at a private conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning students. The conference organizer is refusing to testify. Some school districts paid for transportation and registration fees at the conference and Republicans in the House say that’s why they’re investigating.
Representative Dawn Pettengill, a Republican from Mount Auburn, said using Wolfe’s rational, the panel shouldn’t be launching its separate investigation of a southeast Iowa boarding school that was shut down after allegations of abuse surfaced.
“In this case, as far as we know, there’s no taxpayer dollars that are involved in that,” Pettengill said, “so let’s just be cognizant that we can’t say it’s one thing out of one side of our mouth and something else out of the other side of our mouth.”

KIMT created a special report looking at transgender equity or lack thereof in Iowa and Minnesota.

The Sioux City Journal takes a look at Caitlyn Jenner’s trip to Lamoni for her reality show:

The Iowa that propelled Bruce Jenner to Olympic glory was just as warm and accepting when Caitlyn Jenner returned last year for a segment of her reality series, “I Am Cait.”

“It was fabulous,” Jenner said during an event to promote the E! series. “Everyone was so friendly.”

While in Lamoni, where Jenner attended Graceland University, she showed friends the Bruce Jenner Sports Complex and got to talk to officials who said they may rename it the “Jenner Sports Complex.” “So that was exciting.”

A visit with students, said Chandi Moore, one of Jenner’s new friends, convinced her and others that they were “really open to trans issues” in the state. “They totally embraced us. We saw love for the LGBT community.”

The trip, part of the new season of “I Am Cait,” lets Jenner bond with Moore, Candis Cayne, Ella Giselle and Jennifer Finney Boylan as they discuss transgender issues and what barriers still exist.

Wisconsin
Kenosha News takes a look at the fate of domestic partnerships in Wisconsin:

In the months since marriage equality became the law of the land, Wisconsin’s Domestic Partner Registry has languished, becoming a rarely used option in Kenosha.
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. It followed the June 6, 2014 ruling by a federal judge that Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law — a finding that was upheld by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 5, 2014.
Of the 75 domestic partnerships registered in Kenosha County since 2009, there were three in 2014 and only one in 2015.
What’s the future of the registry in Wisconsin?
Kenosha County Clerk Mary Schuch-Krebs said a marriage grants a couple more rights and benefits than a domestic partnership, but such a partnership is easier to dissolve than a marriage.
If a couple on the registry gets married, the domestic partnership is automatically dissolved.
Wisconsin is not a common law marriage state, and domestic partnerships here are only open to same-sex couples.
Krebs said county clerks have looked at the domestic partnership issue and alerted legislators to possible options.
“It’s up to them what their choice is,” Krebs said. “I think eventually DPs are going to go away.”

A botanical garden in Janesville wants same-sex couples to marry there, the Gazette-Extra reports:

Rotary Botanical Gardens is using a $32,250 state grant to help promote its 20-acre botanical showcase as a destination for lesbian and gay weddings.
Billboards and brochures of the “Let Your Love Bloom” promotion target lesbian and gay couples ages 25 to 35 who live outside of Rock County in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
“The intention was to bring business into Rock County,” said Ron Kuramoto, interim chief executive officer at the gardens, 1455 Palmer Drive.