DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – An Iowa Senate committee has rejected legislation that would prevent nursing homes from barring residents’ use of in-room cameras to guard against abuse or neglect. Senate Study Bill 3080 would allow a nursing home resident or their representative to conduct electronic monitoring of the resident’s room through the use of video cameras — sometimes called “granny cams” — placed inside the room with the consent of any roommates.

The bill was scheduled to be discussed Wednesday at a meeting of the Iowa Senate Committee on Technology, which is chaired by Sen. Charlie McClintock, a Republican from Alburnett. However, the bill was pulled from the agenda shortly before the meeting began. McClintock said Thursday the bill was removed from the agenda once the panel determined it did not have the support of a majority of the committee members.

Without the approval of the committee, the bill’s chances of making it to the floor of the Senate for a full debate are greatly diminished.  If the bill doesn’t advance, 2026 would mark at least the sixth year in a row such legislation has been rejected by state lawmakers. As in previous years, the granny-cam legislation is backed by Diane Hathaway, a Glenwood resident whose mother, Evelyn Havens, was twice hospitalized for severe dehydration, bed sores and an infection while living in an Iowa nursing home.

Although state inspectors would later determine Hathaway’s complaints about the nursing home were valid, the home had refused Hathaway’s request to place a camera in her mother’s room. After Havens’ death, Hathaway launched a campaign to win approval of legislation that would prevent Iowa care facilities from barring the use of cameras. “Nursing homes need to be held accountable to fulfill their legal obligation to deliver compassionate, quality care to each and every resident,” Hathaway said Thursday. “This bill would have provided a necessary first step for ongoing reforms.”

Publicly, industry lobbyists have said they fear resident-owned cameras will create invasion-of-privacy issues for residents — although many Iowa nursing homes have for years used their own surveillance cameras in hallways and common areas to monitor both residents and workers. In fact, state inspectors have repeatedly relied on such footage to document instances of abuse and neglect – even in state-run care facilities.

Nationally, at least 22 states have passed laws concerning residents’ use of cameras in nursing homes, and at least 16 of those states give residents the express right to use such cameras regardless of the homes’ corporate polices. Some states, such as New Jersey, have gone even further, setting up camera-rental programs run out of the state attorney general’s office. Other states allow nursing home operators to prohibit the use of resident-owned cameras, as Iowa now does.