Iowa Lets a Private Employer Prefer Veterans

Most states regulate veteran preference only in public employment. Iowa also tells private employers they may do it and removes the legal risk of doing so. Section 35.3, subsection 1: "A private employer may grant preference in hiring and promotion to an individual who is a veteran." Veteran here means section 35.1, which carries the Iowa residency requirement, unlike the public employment sections. Subsection 2 extends it to two categories of spouse. Paragraph "a": preference may be granted to "the spouse of a veteran who has sustained a permanent, compensable service-connected disability as adjudicated by the United States veterans administration or by the retirement board of one of the armed forces of the United States." Paragraph "b": to "the surviving spouse of a deceased member of the United States armed forces who died while serving on active duty during a time of military conflict or who died as a result of such service." The provision that makes it usable is subsection 3: "Granting a hiring or promotion preference under this section does not violate any state law or local ordinance regarding equal employment opportunity, including but not limited to chapter 216." Chapter 216 is the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Without that sentence an employer weighing a veteran preference would have to consider whether the practice had a disparate effect on a protected class; the legislature answered the question for state and local law. Subsection 4 is the limit: "The hiring and promotion preferences allowable under this section shall only be granted if consistent with applicable federal laws and regulations." Iowa cannot and does not purport to authorise anything federal law forbids. Title VII, the ADEA and the ADA are untouched by this section. What this means in practice. This is permission, not a mandate. No private employer has to prefer a veteran and none can be made to. What the section does is let an Iowa employer advertise and operate a veteran preference without exposure under state civil rights law, which is why Iowa employers can be more explicit about it than employers in states with no equivalent provision. If you are a veteran job-seeking in Iowa, it is a fair question to ask an employer whether they operate a section 35.3 preference. Note the asymmetry with the public sector. Under chapter 35C an Iowa public employer must prefer a veteran and a refusal is reviewable three different ways. Under section 35.3 a private employer may and there is no remedy attached, because there is no duty. The two sections are three sections apart in the Code and do entirely different work. Separately from hiring, Iowa does impose one veteran-specific duty on private employers, and it is in a different chapter: section 91A.5A requires an employer to provide a veteran employee with time off on Veterans Day. That is covered in its own entry.