It took them long enough.

After federal courts blocked two laws designed to suppress unauthorized access to livestock production facilities, Iowa lawmakers approved and Governor Kim Reynolds signed a third attempt to keep animal rights activists from filming or photographing conditions inside farm buildings or slaughterhouses. This time, the legislature finally took the path state attorneys recommended way back in 2011: beef up the trespassing law as applied to agriculture, without reference to speech or expression.

The new law has a realistic chance to survive a court challenge.

Spirits lifted in the pro-choice community when Iowa House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl did not call up a constitutional amendment on abortion shortly after the legislature reconvened this month.

Republican leaders wanted to pass the amendment, which had advanced from committee months earlier. When a high-profile bill doesn’t come to the floor, it often means the majority party doesn’t have the votes for final passage.

Indeed, at least three of the 53 House Republicans resisted immense pressure to vote for legislation designed to overturn an Iowa Supreme Court ruling protecting “the constitutional right of women to terminate a pregnancy.”

Unfortunately, the holdouts agreed to a last-minute abortion restriction that may provide a faster way to undo the high court’s work.

Herb Strentz: Churches in the Des Moines area have found ways to remain safely “open” to their members and the community without resuming in-person services. The title references a 1642 poem by Richard Lovelace. -promoted by Laura Belin

Right after President Donald Trump’s aide Kellyanne Conway endorsed “alternative facts” in her January 2017 defense of false statements about the number of people at Trump’s inauguration, Amazon had two additions to its best-seller list: George Orwell’s 1984 and Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here.

UPDATE: The commission recommended Mary Chicchelly, David May, and Matthew McDermott. I’ve added below highlights from Langholz’s interview.

Iowa’s State Judicial Nominating Commission will interview candidates to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins on March 6. The fifteen applicants include two finalists Governor Kim Reynolds passed over for the vacancy she filled last month (District Court Judge Joel Barrows and Matthew McDermott) and several who have applied for previous vacancies, such as District Court Judges Mary Chicchelly and Patrick Tott, District Associate Judge Romonda Belcher, Assistant Attorney General Molly Weber, and Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren.

Three applicants have provoked anxiety in Iowa legal circles. Bleeding Heartland discussed some problematic aspects of Ostergren’s record when he applied for a Supreme Court vacancy last year. Guthrie County Attorney Brenna (Findley) Bird previously served as chief of staff for U.S. Representative Steve King and later as Governor Terry Branstad’s legal counsel. In that capacity, a jury found last year, Bird and Branstad violated the constitutional rights of former Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey. While working in the Branstad administration, Bird was also involved in rushing through an effort to ban the use of telemedicine for abortions. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down that administrative rule in 2015.

The greatest concern has centered on Sam Langholz, the governor’s senior legal counsel. He is widely perceived as Reynolds’ top choice. Thanks to changes in the selection process Langholz helped engineer last year, the governor may have the votes on the State Judicial Nominating Commission to get her subordinate on Iowa’s highest court.

That would be troubling for several reasons.

Few political issues evoke stronger emotions than abortion. Hundreds of activists on both sides of the issue came to the state capitol on February 25, when the Iowa House held a public hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment that would make future abortion bans immune from court challenge.

More than three dozen people spoke at the hearing, some fighting back tears as they described the life experiences that led them to either support reproductive rights or advocate for restricting women’s choices.

Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Connie Ryan delivered this statement at the February 25 public hearing in the Iowa House regarding a proposed constitutional amendment stating that the Iowa Constitution does not protect any right to an abortion. Bleeding Heartland previously covered that legislation here and here and will be sharing several testimonies from the hearing.

I am Connie Ryan, Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa and Action Fund. We represent people of faith and no faith across Iowa who believe in a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions without the interference of the government.

I want to speak directly to Republican lawmakers. You are attacking the fundamental right of Iowa women to make our own healthcare decisions.

You are ignoring history and you are placing women in danger.

Republican lawmakers in the Iowa House and Senate advanced several bills targeting abortion procedures and providers this week, as a legislative deadline approached.

Several political factors make this year a perfect time for the GOP to curtail Iowa women’s reproductive rights. First, it’s an election year, and no issue motivates social conservative voters more than abortion. Second, 2020 may be the last year of a Republican trifecta. Democrats have a realistic chance to win control of the Iowa House (now split 53-47) in November, which would take any anti-abortion legislation off the table. Finally,  Governor Kim Reynolds will soon have appointed four of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices, ensuring that the high court will uphold almost any abortion restriction passed this year.

Where things stand on the anti-abortion bills introduced this year:

A number of readers and some journalists have asked me recently whether I was able to resolve the credentialing problems I experienced last year.

The short answer is no. Despite being warned that their press credentialing policies “suffer from serious constitutional deficiencies,” leaders in the Iowa House and Senate and staff in Governor Kim Reynolds’ office continue to deny me access to resources they provide to most other reporters who cover state government.

Ira Lacher comments on today’s proceedings in the U.S. Senate. -promoted by Laura Belin

Hello. I’m the Constitution. And if you’re reading this, I’m dead.

Oh, you may see me around, from time to time. Someone or other will always wave a copy of me around, pointing to me as the glue that’s the foundation of America. Abraham Lincoln said of me, “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.” Then, there was this from Rush Limbaugh: “We are hated because we are free. We are hated because of the idea that is the United States of America. We are hated because of our Constitution.”

Yeah, but my organs have shut down. By breaths have ceased. I have flat-lined. And so, I’m dead. Here are a few examples why.

North Carolina Republican lawmakers have a history of behaving like “banana republic” autocrats, canceling primary elections they couldn’t rig and attempting to limit the authority of the governor and Supreme Court after GOP candidates lost last year’s elections for those offices.

Today Republican leaders of the North Carolina House pulled something new out of their bag of reprehensible tricks. They called a surprise vote to override Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget while many Democratic colleagues were absent from the chamber for a 9/11 remembrance event or committee hearings.

I doubt Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer would stoop so low. But even if she wanted to, she could not attempt this gambit here.

Ira Lacher: “If there were ever a real right to own a gun, it has been abused by the number of persons who die by gun in America — 100 times each day, 365 days each year. And like anything we have abused, it is time for it to be taken away.” -promoted by Laura Belin

“Lets eat, Grandma!”

Ignore the comma and the speaker becomes a cannibal.

“… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Ignore the comma, as millions of Americans do, including our illustrious Supreme Court, and you have what we experience uniquely among all developed nations: repeated mass carnage at the point of a gun.

Ira Lacher reflects on the impact of federalism. -promoted by Laura Belin

On the eve of Independence Day, let us take a moment to consider that, like knowledge, too much independence is a dangerous thing.

When the founders declared America’s independence from Britain, they envisioned a nation composed of 13 semiautonomous states, which would maintain a delicate balance with a central government. That Rube Goldberg gadget empowered states to declare which human beings were human beings and which were property.

Two transgender Iowans and an LGBTQ advocacy group are challenging the new statute intended to deprive transgender people of Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery. The ACLU of Iowa filed suit in Polk County District Court on May 31 on behalf of Aiden Vasquez, Mika Covington, and One Iowa.

Listening to the plaintiffs explain why they took this step, I was struck by the contrast between their heartfelt, compelling words and Governor Kim Reynolds’ heartless, clueless excuses for signing discrimination into law.

Bleeding Heartland continues to catch up on the legislature’s significant actions during the session that ended on April 27. Previous posts related to the work of the Iowa House or Senate can be found here.

Republicans showed little interest in amending the Iowa Constitution during the 2019 session. Only one amendment passed both chambers. If and when that proposal appears on a statewide ballot, it will spark a costly and divisive campaign about gun rights and regulations.

The Senate and House debate over the pro-gun amendment is the focus of the first half of this post. Arguments raised on both sides will surely return in future television commercials and mass mailings.

The rest of the post reviews this year’s unsuccessful attempts to change the constitution. One amendment (backed by Governor Kim Reynolds) made it through the Iowa House, and four others advanced from a House or Senate committee but did not come up for a floor vote. The rest did not get through a committee, even though some of the same ideas went further last year.

Governor Kim Reynolds issued her first item veto of the year this week, rejecting part of a budget bill that sought to limit Attorney General Tom Miller’s authority to sign on to multi-state lawsuits. However, she did so only after Miller agreed not to join any such litigation without her permission, ensuring that he “will not be suing the Trump administration” anymore. In addition, the governor’s veto letter praised the “Legislature’s leadership on this issue.”

While not the worst-case scenario, the resolution of this conflict could invite more Republican bills encroaching on the authority of statewide elected Democrats. The governor and her staff could then pressure those officials to cede some of their power in exchange for a veto.

On the first day of the Iowa legislature’s 2019 session, Secretary of State Paul Pate formally notified lawmakers that a “procedural oversight” by his office had wiped away progress toward adopting two constitutional amendments.

On the session’s final day, lawmakers took steps to ensure that neither Pate nor any future secretary of state can repeat the error.

Ira Lacher: Lawmakers in Canada, the UK, and Germany “have accepted the premise that if you drop a hammer from the 15th floor of a building, you don’t need to look down to know the hammer has fallen.” -promoted by Laura Belin

There’s a new law in Iowa. Under the guise of promoting free speech, it’s intended to give free reign to those who, under cover of the First Amendment, deliver hate language on college campuses.

The legislation reads, in part: “[I]t is not the proper role of an institution of higher education to shield individuals from speech protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which may include ideas and opinions the individual finds unwelcome, disagreeable, or even offensive.”

The law permits colleges to restrict hate speech only if that speech contains “a threat of serious harm and expression directed or likely directed to provoke imminent unlawful actions.” But there’s the problem: America, unlike other countries, does not define such language, much less outlaw it.

President Donald Trump will soon cast his first veto. The U.S. Senate approved on March 14 a resolution disapproving of Trump’s declaration of emergency powers. All 47 members of the Democratic caucus and twelve Republicans voted for the resolution (roll call). Iowa’s Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were among the 41 Republicans to oppose terminating Trump’s power grab.

Iowa legislators just can’t quit violating the constitution in the service of livestock farmers and their lobby groups.

Two months after a federal judge comprehensively dismantled Iowa’s 2012 law prohibiting “agricultural production facility fraud,” the state House and Senate approved a bill creating the crime of “agricultural production facility trespass.” Governor Kim Reynolds has indicated she will sign the legislation. (UPDATE: She signed it on March 14.)

Although the drafters modeled the new bill after portions of an Idaho statute that survived a legal challenge, federal courts could and should strike down this law. Like the previous “ag gag” legislation, its primary purpose is to suppress speech reflecting certain viewpoints.

The Iowa House Judiciary Committee unanimously voted on March 6 to advance a state constitutional amendment on automatic restoration of voting rights after an offender has completed a felony sentence. The action indicates one of Governor Kim Reynolds’ priorities for the 2019 legislative session should clear the lower chamber with little resistance.

This week the U.S. House approved the most significant regulations on gun sales to pass the lower chamber of Congress in 25 years.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Iowa legislature advanced a constitutional amendment that could invalidate nearly every state-level restriction on firearms ownership or sales.

The U.S. House voted on February 26 to terminate President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall that Congress repeatedly declined to authorize or fund. All 232 Democrats present, including Iowa’s Representatives Abby Finkenauer (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Cindy Axne (IA-03) backed the resolution, joined by thirteen House Republicans (roll call). Representative Steve King (IA-04) was among 182 Republicans who opposed the joint resolution.

In statements enclosed in full below, Finkenauer, Axne, and Loebsack highlighted the need to defend the checks and balances prescribed by the U.S. Constitution, which grants spending power to Congress.

The National Emergencies Act requires a U.S. Senate vote within eighteen days on any House-approved joint resolution to terminate a presidential declaration. Three Senate Republicans have already pledged to vote for the resolution. More than half a dozen others criticized Trump’s decision and seem open to formally rejecting it.

Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are not seen as potential supporters of this bipartisan effort. They have never defied the Trump administration and had little to say about the president’s power grab. But given their stature in the Republican caucus and their forceful denunciations of President Barack Obama’s executive actions, Iowa’s senators have an excellent opportunity to show some principles matter more to them than political loyalty.

Aaron Hawbaker is the chief public defender for Black Hawk County. -promoted by Laura Belin

I am a criminal defense attorney. More specifically, I am a public defender. That further distinction is important for this discussion, because public defenders do not choose their clients based upon ability to pay or the merits of their case. They take all comers, warts and all. I am now in my fifteenth year of public defense and have had the responsibility of defending individuals charged with the spectrum of human baseness.

I am often asked, more frequently the more notorious the case, how can you represent those people?

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller didn’t ask state legislators to pass the country’s first “ag gag” law, and his office didn’t lobby in favor of banning “agricultural production facility fraud” while the bill was pending.

But the Attorney General’s office confirmed on February 21 that the state will appeal a federal court ruling against the 2012 law. The new court filing keeps up the pretense that a law designed to suppress investigative reporting was really about biosecurity and property rights.

Iowa House Chief Clerk Carmine Boal has refused to grant me credentials for the chamber during the 2019 legislative session. Staff for Governor Kim Reynolds have ignored repeated messages seeking credentials to cover the governor’s office or an explanation for denying my request.

Under the U.S. and Iowa constitutions, no government agency or official may restrain or abridge the freedom of the press. Government bodies must apply any media restrictions uniformly, without regard to the content of news reporting or commentary. That’s not happening here.

Secretary of State Paul Pate has asked Iowa lawmakers to consider removing his agency’s responsibility to publish proposed constitutional amendments in Iowa newspapers. His request follows a “procedural oversight” that erased the legislature’s progress last year on adding expansive pro-gun language to the state’s founding document.

“[A]ll of our work has been wiped away,” Iowa Firearms Coalition President Kurt Liske wrote in an e-mail to supporters on the evening of January 13. “Because of the Secretary of State’s complete failure, we must now go back to square one of the constitutional amendment process.”

Pro-gun advocates thought they were halfway toward amending Iowa’s constitution to include expansive language on gun rights, which could invalidate many existing regulations.

But Republican lawmakers will have to start over this year, because Secretary of State Paul Pate dropped the ball.

Justin Scott is the state director for the Iowa chapter of American Atheists. -promoted by Laura Belin

The notion of religious freedom — what it is, what it isn’t and what it should be — is being tested here in Iowa.

In April 2017, the Iowa House of Representatives respected my religious rights when I delivered the first atheistic invocation in that body’s history. The Iowa Senate, however, has denied my repeated requests to perform a similar invocation. In so doing, the Senate is not only directly discriminating against me, but also violating the Constitution, which protects all faiths equally.

Governor Kim Reynolds swore an oath to “support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of Iowa.” But when she missed a deadline for filling a district court vacancy in June, she did not follow the process outlined in Iowa’s constitution.

Public records obtained by Bleeding Heartland indicate that Reynolds did not convey her choice for Judicial District 6 to anyone until four days after her authority to make the appointment had lapsed. Nevertheless, staff assured the news media and Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady that the governor had named Judge Jason Besler on time.

Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate later signed an appointment and commission certificate that was backdated, creating the impression the governor had acted within the constitutionally-mandated window.

A little-noticed Iowa Supreme Court decision may leave Iowans more vulnerable to infringements of their constitutional rights.

Five justices held in Baldwin v. City of Estherville that government officials who can prove they “exercised all due care to conform with the requirements of the law” can’t be sued for wrongful arrests or searches and seizures. Justice Edward Mansfield’s majority opinion establishes qualified immunity for state constitutional law claims in Iowa. That legal concept means plaintiffs can’t easily sue individual officials (such as police officers) for violating their rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s broad application of qualified immunity has become a hot topic of debate among legal scholars.

To my knowledge, no Iowa media have reported on Baldwin, which was overshadowed by higher-profile split decisions the state Supreme Court filed on the same day in June: namely, a landmark 5-2 abortion rights ruling and a 4-3 ruling that allowed a county attorney to return to his job despite a well-documented history of sexual harassment.

But dissenting Justice Brent Appel warned the Baldwin majority opinion may encourage abuses of power: “Rather than follow the state’s motto, ‘Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain,’ the majority follows an approach that suggests ‘Our Liberties Are Transient and Our Rights Are Expendable.’” Professor Mark Kende, director of Drake University’s Constitutional Law Center, told Bleeding Heartland last month that Baldwin could be an “‘under the radar’ big deal case.”

State Senator David Johnson, the only independent to serve in the Iowa legislature in recent decades, announced today he will not seek re-election in November. He had won four previous state Senate races as a Republican and indicated last year that he planned to run for another term. However, Johnson had neither raised nor spent any money from his campaign account since January 1.

The retirement gives the GOP, which already holds 29 of the 50 seats in the upper chamber, a clear shot at picking up Senate district 1 in the state’s northwest corner. According to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, this district contains 7,304 active registered Democrats, 20,589 Republicans, and 13,333 no-party voters. Only one seat (nearby Senate district 2) is more heavily skewed toward the GOP. Brad Price, Zach Whiting, and Jesse Wolfe are competing for the GOP nomination in Johnson’s district. Democrats did not field a candidate here.

Iowa lawmakers went home for the year on May 5. In the coming weeks, Bleeding Heartland will catch up on some of the legislature’s significant work that attracted relatively little attention.

Two proposed state constitutional amendments passed both chambers and could appear on the 2020 general election ballot, if the House and Senate approve them in the same form during either 2019 or 2020.

Three other constitutional amendments cleared one chamber in 2017–in one case unanimously–then stalled in the other chamber as lawmakers completed this two-year session. Those ideas may resurface next year. But since changes to the state constitution must be passed by two consecutively elected legislatures before landing on the general election ballot (the last step in the process), Iowa voters would not be able to ratify those proposals until November 2022 at the earliest.

Marty Ryan is a nearly retired lobbyist after 27 Iowa legislative sessions. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Lawmakers have introduced a glut of proposed amendments to Iowa’s Constitution in the legislature this year. So far, only two have survived. House Joint Resolution 2009 would guarantee the right to bear arms. Both chambers would have to pass identical language during the Eighty-Eighth General Assembly (2019-2020) in order to put that amendment on the November 2020 ballot for Iowans to approve or disapprove.

The other proposal is Senate Joint Resolution 2006, which would change the procedure for who succeeds the governor in case of death, resignation, impeachment, or inability to carry out the duties of governor. It also redefines the procedure for accomplishing that transition.

Reading the legalese of the legislative document will have you bored to death, confused, or excited to solve it like a New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle.

A guest commentary by a committed activist who served on the Iowa Democratic Party Platform and Rules Committees and currently serves on a county central committee. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I believe in obeying the Constitution. The 14th Amendment says that debts of the USA shall not be questioned. Steve King–and most Republicans–voted to not raise the debt ceiling which would have put the government in default. That vote led to the downgrading of the government’s credit rating. The 14th amendment also guarantees equal protection under the law. But Republicans don’t think the Constitution applies to same sex couples who wish to marry. George W. Bush violated the constitutional rights of Americans by spying on them without a warrant. Democrats objected; Republicans didn’t. President Barack Obama nominated a replacement for the late Justice Scalia. Republicans senators refuse to do their duty and vote to confirm—or not—that nominee.

I don’t believe judges should legislate from the bench, but I do believe they must strike down laws that violate the Constitution. Republicans applauded the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down the Washington D.C. handgun law, but went nuts when the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down the law banning gay marriage. Republicans agreed when activist justices on the U.S. Supreme Court created a new right for corporations to spend unlimited secret money to try to buy our elections with misleading TV ads; Democrats want that decision overturned.

Originalists, who claim that the Constitution must be interpreted as the Founding Fathers meant it, are contradicted by the Founding Fathers themselves.

An essay inspired by a “legendary” moment for free speech activism. -promoted by desmoinesdem

There sure is a lot of talk lately about that venerable old document we call the “Constitution.”  There’s a lot of disagreement over how it is to be interpreted, and the intentions of the original Framers regarding language, but one thing everyone seems to agree on:  No one is getting it right…except for ourselves, of course, whenever we want to use it to enforce our views.

Our Constitution is the supreme law of the United States and defines the rules and separation of powers by which the three branches of federal government will operate.  It is the charter that outlines how our government is to work.

Within the Constitution is Article 5 which defines the Amendment Clause; the process by which the Constitution can be changed.  The first 10 Amendments are known as the Bill of Rights, however, 17 more have been added since.  This was created because the Framers, collectively visionary, knew that the world and their young country would change.

Gary Kroeger looks at the proposed “First Amendment Defense Act,” which “may very well be the most frightening oxymoron of all time.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

What does it mean to be free in America? I believe it means that in the United States of America, no citizen will be denied services, opportunities, benefits, goods, transactions, acquisitions, access or mobility on the basis of their race, creed (religion), color, or gender. In fact, if there were distinctions to determine the extent of such rights, based on any physical or spiritual difference, then “American Freedom” would become meaningless.

This is not a state to state issue, either. There cannot be one definition for the qualifications of civil rights in one state that differs from another. American citizens can pass freely with a full complement of rights and expect the full protection of federal law. How could that be argued?

Yet it is. It is in legislation that is being re-introduced by Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. And with a supportive Republican Congress and the blessings of President Trump, the First Amendment Defense Act could pass.

For a self-style “constitutional conservative,” Representative Steve King has a lot of trouble with the separation of powers concept. In the past, King has tried to block federal courts from hearing cases related to marriage rights and encouraged state governments to disregard the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling.

King went one step further this week by introducing a bill to prohibit the Supreme Court from citing its previous cases involving the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Legal experts agree King’s proposal is itself unconstitutional.

Just four years ago, Representative Steve King’s commitment to ending birthright citizenship was considered such a political liability for Republicans that King was passed over to chair the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration.

Now a growing number of Republican presidential candidates would end birthright citizenship for children born to parents not authorized to live in the U.S. In fact, GOP presidential contenders who share King’s perspective outnumber those who are willing to defend current law, which has been settled for more than a century.

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled unconstitutional an Idaho law that criminalized lying to obtain employment at an agricultural facility or making unauthorized audio and video recordings at such facilities. Will Potter, one of the plaintiffs challenging the “ag gag” law, has been covering the case at the Green is the New Red blog. Judge Lyn Winmill’s ruling (pdf) found that the Idaho law’s provisions violated both “the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution.

The Iowa House and Senate approved and Governor Terry Branstad signed our state’s version of the “ag gag” law in 2012. It was the first of its kind in the country.

Although Iowa’s law differed from the Idaho statute in some ways, several parts of yesterday’s federal court ruling would appear to apply equally to Iowa’s law. After the jump I’ve enclosed the relevant language from both state laws and excerpts from Judge Winmill’s ruling.

State Senator Mark Chelgren celebrated his 45th birthday last week with cupcakes for fellow senators and a promise that he will try to change an obscure part of the Iowa Constitution.

Legislators often introduce bills solely to make a political statement, but even in that context, Chelgren’s effort is an impressive feat of irrelevant grandstanding.