From left: Author Laurie Halse Anderson, author Malinda Lo, and Iowa State Education Association President Mike Beranek. Screenshots taken during the November 30 news conference announcing a new legal challenge to Senate File 496.

“The right to speak and the right to read are inextricably intertwined.”

So declare the plaintiffs in the second lawsuit filed challenging Iowa’s new ban on certain library books and classroom materials.

The new federal lawsuit focuses on two provisions of Senate File 496, which Republican lawmakers approved in April and Governor Kim Reynolds signed in May. A separate federal lawsuit filed last week challenges SF 496 in its entirety, focusing on additional provisions targeting LGBTQ students as well as the book bans.

Plaintiffs Puck Carlson (left) and Berry Stevens (right) in photos provided by the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal

Iowa Republican lawmakers and Governor Kim Reynolds enacted several laws this year that discriminate against LGBTQ people. This week, seven Iowa families and the advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools filed the first lawsuit challenging one of those statutes: the wide-ranging education bill known as Senate File 496.

The plaintiffs, who include eight LGBTQ students attending public elementary, middle, or high schools across Iowa, have laid out a compelling case that SF 496 violates LGBTQ students’ First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in several ways, as well as the federal Equal Access Act.

A Polk County District Court has ruled that the Iowa legislature “overstepped” when it enacted a law allowing police to search garbage outside a home without a warrant.

In a November 13 order granting a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained through trash grabs, Chief Judge Michael Huppert found the 2022 law “void as inconsistent with the language of article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution as interpreted by the Iowa Supreme Court.”

Cato is an attorney who spent most of his career fighting for civil liberties and other public policy matters in Iowa. He is a lifelong Iowan. His legal interests include constitutional law (separation of powers), federalism, legislative procedures and public policy, and the laws of war. Editor’s note: Bleeding Heartland allows guest authors to publish under pseudonyms at Laura Belin’s discretion.

INTRODUCTION

The Iowa General Assembly changed some practices in light of the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling in LS Power Midcontinent v. Iowa, which struck down the Right of First Refusal (ROFR) portion of the 2020 Budget Omnibus Bill (House File 2643) as violating Article III, Section 29 of the Iowa Constitution. Justice Thomas Waterman wrote the decision, joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Edward Mansfield and Christopher McDonald. Justices Dana Oxley, Matthew McDermott, and David May recused from the case.

In the weeks following the court ruling, Republicans in both the state House and Senate refused to answer questions during floor debate regarding ambiguities in legislation and other questions relating to how certain language will play out in the real world lives of Iowans. Iowa media covered those developments in April:

• Todd Dorman, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa Senate GOP has no answers
• Zach Sommers, We Are Iowa, Iowa Republicans refuse to answer questions during debate, citing recent Iowa Supreme Court Case
• Stephen Gruber-Miller, Des Moines Register, Iowa Senate Republicans’ new strategy is to stop answering questions during bill debate
• Laura Belin, Bleeding Heartland, Republicans shatter another Iowa Senate norm
• Erin Murphy, Cedar Rapids Gazette,  Iowa Republicans self-censor debate, citing Supreme Court ruling

Senate and House Republicans seem to have stopped answering questions because the Iowa Supreme Court’s LS Power ruling extensively quoted comments Senator Michael Breitbach made while floor managing HF 2643. They apparently believe the Court used these floor comments as justification for striking down the ROFR provision at issue in that case. 

Attorneys for the state and for intervenors filed applications on April 7, asking the Court to reconsider its conclusions and holdings in the ruling. LS Power filed its response on April 19. The Supreme Court denied the request for a rehearing on April 26 without much explanation. An amended opinion released on May 30 corrected some (but not all) factual inaccuracies in the initial ruling. 

The General Assembly adjourned its legislative session on May 4 without any action in response to the court denying the requests for a rehearing. Only time will tell how this constitutional impasse between the legislative and judicial branches gets resolved. Paths available to both branches could restore the balance of power without escalating the dispute. 

Regardless of how long it takes or how the dispute gets resolved, Iowans must never forget that your constitution exists for the sole purpose of protecting and guaranteeing your individual rights and liberties as free and independent People. Iowa Const. Art. 1, Sec. 2 (“All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people, and they have the right, at all times, to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it.”). 

This article hopes to explain why the Iowa Supreme Court and Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate are both guilty of violating the Iowa Constitution, while also seeking to provide a framework to resolve the impasse between the legislative and judicial branches. Similarly, this article hopes to persuade a future litigant to nudge the court in the right direction in a future case, and to persuade the people to nudge the General Assembly in the right direction consistent with this constitutional framework. 

To that end, here is the analysis of Article III, Section 29 of the Iowa Constitution from the perspective of the Iowa People. 

Janice Weiner is a Democratic state senator representing Iowa City and a member of the Iowa Senate State Government Committee, where Republicans ran the bill that received final approval as House File 732.

During the time-limited debate on Iowa’s six-week abortion ban on July 11, the Iowa Senate—predictably—ran out of time. You can’t say everything that truly needs to be said, argue all the inaccuracies and vague language and failures and exceptions that sound good on paper but have shown themselves, across this country, to be paper tigers, in a matter of hours.

One important argument that fell on the “time certain” cutting room floor: freedom of religion. I’ve reorganized the freedom of religion portion of my constitutional arguments speech into this article.

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party.    

More than a year has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade and Casey precedents, stripping women of a right they’d had for nearly 50 years to make their own reproductive health-care decisions. The Dobbs v. Jackson decision has affected American lives in many ways, and had some surprising consequences.

For the first time ever, a majority of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable and recent abortion laws are too strict.

For the first time in two decades, more people identify as “pro-choice” versus “pro-life.”