Governor Kim Reynolds has appointed former State Representative Dustin Hite as a District Court judge. The governor’s office announced the appointment on November 29, one day before the end of the 30-day window for Reynolds to name either Hite or the other nominee for the position, Keokuk County attorney Amber Thompson.

Hite served two terms in the state legislature, and as chair of the House Education Committee helped enact some of Reynolds’ agenda. He fast-tracked bills in 2021 that required schools to provide fully in-person instruction as an option, and prohibited school districts and local governments from imposing mask mandates.

However, Hite earned the governor’s wrath by not bringing school voucher bills up for a vote in the Education Committee during the 2021 or 2022 legislative sessions. In addition, he opted not to assign school “bathroom bills” to a subcommittee, and opposed various “tort reform” proposals to limit damages Iowans could recover in medical malpractice cases or lawsuits involving trucking companies. 

Hite was among four House Republicans who opposed school voucher bills and subsequently lost their 2022 primaries after Reynolds endorsed GOP rivals. The governor recorded a robocall urging voters to back Helena Hayes in Hite’s district. Hayes was just re-elected to a second term representing House district 88.

Dani Replogle is a staff attorney with the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The Midwest’s iconic prairie potholes and other wetlands across the nation are under attack. A politically motivated lawsuit targeting the popular “Swampbuster” provision of the 1985 Farm Bill aims to erode a policy that has protected wetlands and supported farmers for nearly four decades. The case–CTM Holdings, LLC v. U.S. Department of Agriculture–is now pending before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.

From cleaning water and providing wildlife habitat to mitigating droughts and flooding, wetlands perform a panoply of ecosystem services that benefit human health and safety. As the impacts of climate change intensify over the coming years, farmers and rural communities stand to benefit immensely from wetlands protected by Swampbuster. That’s why a group of sustainable agriculture groups including Food & Water Watch, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Environmental Council, and Dakota Rural Action have moved to intervene in the lawsuit that will decide the program’s fate. 

DSM Lawyer is an attorney in central Iowa.

When will we stop politicizing the judiciary? I practice in Polk County District Court Associate Judge Rachael Seymour’s courtroom all the time and have thoughts about why she received low marks in the Iowa State Bar Association’s judicial performance review.

Yes, hearings in her courtroom tend not to run on time, and she can take a long time to issue a written ruling. Why? Because she’s extremely thorough when we’re in court, and she gives a complete verbal ruling while you’re there. She wants to have all the possible information before making decisions that affect families, and she takes time to review all of the written evidence as well as review her notes prior to finalizing the written ruling.

Even the Iowa Court of Appeals recently noted the thoroughness of one of her rulings. This is a good thing, because it ensures everyone has all the same information rather than relying on our own individual recollections of what happened. I generally find that if I just pad my own schedule a little there’s no issue.

Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.

Christian Nationalism has seen so many victories with the makeup of the highest courts at both the state and federal levels. Time and again right-wing courts seem poised to enact theocracy by privileging religious belief over equality under the law and even basic human and civil rights.

These rulings and opinions are never based on reason or evidence but rather are special pleading for some vague “sincerely held belief” that seems to act as a get-out-of-jail-free card for religious individuals and organizations that circumvent civil rights laws. There are many examples in the not-so-distant history that point to this creeping assault on equal treatment under the law, but also rulings just this year that many people would likely be surprised to hear about.

Voters will decide in November whether to let Iowa Supreme Court Justice David May serve in that role for another eight years.

Justice May is heavily favored to keep his job. There is no organized statewide campaign against him, comparable to the well-funded efforts to oust Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010 and 2012. His two colleagues who were up for retention in 2022 each received about 67 percent “yes” votes.

However, many reproductive rights advocates have circulated emails or social media posts calling on Iowans to vote against the newest justice, because in June he joined the 4-3 majority opinion that allowed the state to enforce a near-total abortion ban. Abortion is a more salient issue in this year’s election than it was two years ago.

It can be difficult for voters to find detailed information about the judges on the ballot. This post provides context on how Justice May has approached Iowa Supreme Court cases in several areas of the law. Bleeding Heartland previously covered the highest- and lowest-rated Iowa Court of Appeals and District Court judges who are up for retention this year.

If Justice May receives more “no” than “yes” votes—as happened with three Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010—his tenure on the court will end in December. The State Judicial Nominating Commission would interview candidates for the vacancy and send three finalists to Governor Kim Reynolds for her consideration. Notably, nine of the seventeen commission members are themselves Reynolds appointees, so conservatives would likely end up on the short list of Supreme Court nominees.

Iowans will decide this November whether to allow one Iowa Supreme Court justice, four Iowa Court of Appeals judges, and 64 Iowa District Court judges to remain on the bench. Since our state adopted the current judicial selection system in 1962, each judge must periodically go on the ballot—every eight years for Iowa Supreme Court justices, every six years for those serving on other courts.

Iowa voters have retained almost all judges over the past six decades. But any jurist who receives more “no” than “yes” votes in November—as happened with three Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010—will be out of a job. Governor Kim Reynolds would fill any vacancies in early 2025, after receiving a list of finalists from the State Judicial Nominating Commission or its district-level counterpart.

While some people routinely approve or reject every judge up for retention as a matter of principle, voters who want to make informed choices often find it difficult to learn anything about the judges listed on the back of the ballot.

This post highlights the appeals and district court judges who received the highest and lowest ratings in the 2024 Judicial Performance Review, the main public source of information about Iowa’s judges. I will also explain why I plan to vote against retaining a member of the Iowa Court of Appeals and a district associate judge in Polk County.

A forthcoming Bleeding Heartland article will analyze how Iowa Supreme Court Justice David May has decided high-profile cases since Reynolds appointed him in July 2022.

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The state of Iowa, where nursing homes have compiled one of the nation’s worst records for staffing-level violations, has joined nineteen other states in suing the Biden administration to block the implementation of new staffing requirements.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, seeks to overturn the nursing home staffing requirements approved earlier this year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In their petition, the 20 states and more than a dozen industry associations argue that the new staffing requirements pose “an existential threat to the nursing home industry as many nursing homes that are already struggling will have no choice but to go out of business. And the main victims will be the patients who will have nowhere else to go.”

Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is suing the federal government over its alleged lax oversight of a major Iowa puppy-mill operator.

The ASPCA filed the lawsuit on September 19 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, naming as defendants the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Michael Watson, who heads the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Also named as a defendant is Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture and former governor of Iowa.

The lawsuit alleges that the USDA has violated the federal Animal Welfare Act by repeatedly renewing the license of Steve Kruse, an Iowa-based breeder who operates a large-scale kennel in West Point and has a long history of animal welfare violations.

The last few weeks could hardly have gone worse for the Libertarian Party of Iowa. Republican activists successfully forced the party’s three U.S. House candidates off the ballot, leaving Nicholas Gluba, Marco Battaglia, and Charles Aldrich to run write-in campaigns in the first, third, and fourth Congressional districts.

Meanwhile, a crowded field of presidential candidates imperils Libertarian prospects to retain major-party status in Iowa for the next election cycle.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Here we go again.

Don’t be surprised if there is a hard-fought campaign between now and the November election over a guy named David May. You may not recognize his name. But you will in the weeks to come.

May is the newest member of the Iowa Supreme Court. His name will be on the ballot in November, with voters having the opportunity to weigh in on whether he should be retained as one of the high court’s seven justices.

A legal challenge to a “giant step backward” for Iowa women ended this week.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Iowa City-based Emma Goldman Clinic, and Dr. Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood North Central States, on August 15 asked a Polk County District Court to dismiss their lawsuit challenging Iowa’s near-total abortion ban.

The state has been able to enforce the ban (House File 732) since July 29, making most abortions illegal after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected. That often happens around six weeks after the last menstrual period. The Iowa Supreme Court ruling that allowed the 2023 law to go into effect made it almost impossible for plaintiffs to show the statute is unconstitutional.

Bill Graham is Vice-Chair of the Iowa State Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers. That committee released the following statement on August 16: “The Iowa State Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers Opposes Attacks on Iowa State Judges and Justices.”

The Iowa State Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) opposes attacks on individual judges and justices based upon recent opinions released.

Just over a year ago, Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader made and encouraged impeachment threats against Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice [Susan] Christensen and Justices [Thomas] Waterman and [Edward] Mansfield arising from their decision in Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, et al, v. Reynolds, No. 22-2036 (Iowa S.Ct. June 16, 2023). Fortunately for the people of Iowa, the effort did not succeed. The justices had released an opinion declining to remove an injunction preventing the enforcement of the fetal heartbeat bill.

More recently, Lea DeLong who is associated with the Iowans for Reproductive Freedom (which is not officially involved in the effort) penned a letter that was discussed within a Des Moines Register opinion piece headlined as IOWANS ARE TALKING ABOUT FIRING JUDGES AGAIN. THEY MAKE A GOOD CASE, August 9, 2024. DeLong makes the case for the removal of Iowa Supreme Court Justice David May because of his vote in a recent opinion – suggesting Justice May is ideologically out of touch with people in the state. The opinion upheld a 6-week abortion ban as constitutional.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com.

When I was a kid growing up in eastern Iowa during the 1970s, the school library opened up the world to me.

I remember rushing through my homework during study hall, so I could get to the library.

Like most students in school, there were classes I loved (history and English) and those I hated (math and science). But despite my misgivings about the curriculum, never did I doubt my love for the school library. To me, it was a refuge for independent thought and exploration, where nobody could exercise control over where my mind wandered.

There, the world beckoned, and I eagerly dove in.

Transgender or nonbinary Iowans under age 18 will soon have more help obtaining gender-affirming care out of state. In partnership with the LGBTQ advocacy group One Iowa, the North Carolina-based Campaign for Southern Equality is expanding its Trans Youth Emergency Project to Iowa, the groups announced on August 9. 

Republican lawmakers and Governor Kim Reynolds banned gender-affirming care (such as puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery) for Iowa minors last year. More than two dozen GOP-controlled states have enacted similar laws. The Campaign for Southern Equality estimates that 38 percent of transgender youth nationally and 93 percent of those in the South live in states that ban gender-affirming care.

A news release explained that the Trans Youth Emergency Project provides “1-on-1 custom patient navigation services and supports families of transgender youth with emergency grants of $500, renewable every six months, to help them travel out of state for care.” The project has distributed “more than $500,000 in direct emergency grants to 1,000 families and individuals” in fifteen states since March 2023. After the expansion, grants will be available to families in 25 states.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Question: When is a bribe not a bribe, but a thank-you gift?

Answer: When it’s paid after the fact, not before.

So says the U.S. Supreme Court.

UPDATE: On July 22, the Iowa Supreme Court referred the case back to District Court. The same day, Judge Jeffrey Farrell issued an order dissolving the temporary injunction and allowing the law to be “fully enforced,” effective 8:00 AM on Monday, July 29. Original post follows.

Three weeks after the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the state should be able to enforce a near-total abortion ban, the law is still on hold.

Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell said during a July 19 virtual conference that the Iowa Supreme Court had not yet issued an order transferring the case back to District Court. That needs to happen before the judge can dissolve a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the ban (House File 732).

Under Iowa’s rules of civil procedure, the high court cannot transfer a case to lower court within the first 21 days after a Supreme Court ruling (that period ends on July 19), or “while a properly filed petition for rehearing” is pending. The plaintiffs in this case—Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Emma Goldman Clinic, and Dr. Sarah Traxler—filed a petition for rehearing on July 11. They provided three reasons the Iowa Supreme Court majority should have left the injunction in place while litigation proceeds.

It’s not clear when the Supreme Court will accept or reject the petition for rehearing. The court rarely grants such requests and rarely makes significant changes to decisions already published.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter.

In late June, six conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices overruled the Chevron doctrine in a case called Loper Bright v. Raimondo. The 40-year-old Chevron precedent had required courts to give deference to an administrative agency’s interpretation of the laws it administers and enforces.

This may sound like an issue only a lawyer would care about. But it has major implications for how government functions.

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

Sometimes it’s called a code of ethics, sometimes a code of conduct. In my experience, any such code is necessary, primarily when someone is acting in a way that either is, or might be perceived, as being contrary to basic ethical norms. Yes, public perception matters. If your entity has never had need for such a code, you’re lucky; you may want to put some “guardrails” in place before you’ll wish you had.  

“Basic ethical norms” is a vague reference, with often difficult-to-agree-upon specifics. In most local governance situations—such as the nonprofit boards I’m most familiar with—such codes are dangerously rare. Occasionally, guidance comes from a national office, if one exists. For example, the American Bar Association (Model Rules of Professional Conduct) addresses attorneys and the American Medical Association (Code of Medical Ethics) does the same for physicians.

Ed Tibbetts, a longtime reporter and editor in the Quad-Cities, is the publisher of the Along the Mississippi newsletter, where this article first appeared. Find more of his work at edtibbetts.substack.com

I’ve said it before, Governor Kim Reynolds is a smart politician. She won’t tell you the truth, but she’s a smart politician.

I’ve been thinking of this lately because of news stories about a federal judge dismissing a lawsuit that challenged the Iowa governor’s decision to cut off additional pandemic-related unemployment benefits three years ago. (Plaintiffs are appealing that decision.)

Writing under the handle “Bronxiniowa,” Ira Lacher, who actually hails from the Bronx, New York, is a longtime journalism, marketing, and public relations professional.

Former President Donald J. Trump thus reacted in dismay last week after a Manhattan jury convicted the former U.S. president and current GOP candidate to reclaim that office on 34 counts of business impropriety, adding …

Sorry; that wasn’t Trump who said that. Or any Trump supporter. Or last week, or last year, or even last decade. It was what University of Southern California law professor Jody David Armour told the Los Angeles Times after four police officers in that city were acquitted of assault against Rodney King in 1992.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Here is a tidbit from my years as a newspaper reporter and editor:

I never voted in a primary election, never attended the Iowa caucuses, never stuck a candidate’s sign in my yard, never had a bumper sticker on my car, never signed a petition, never donated to a campaign.

When Sue and I married, she got something more in the deal than my sparkling personality. She knew she could not have any yard signs, because people driving past our home would not know which part of the yard was for her opinions and which was for mine. To eliminate any confusion, there were no yard signs. Period.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Where does your primary loyalty lie: as a citizen of America, or as a citizen of Iowa?

Probably seems like a meaningless question. But around the nation, more and more states these days are enacting laws in opposition to those of the federal government, placing the loyalty question front and center. And a growing number of U.S. residents are declaring a preference to honor their state laws above those of the United States.

ORIGINS OF THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE

In terms of settled law, there’s no real dispute: federal law outranks state law. The U.S. Constitution leaves no doubt. Article VI, Clause 2 (the “Supremacy Clause”), reads as follows:

Robin Opsahl covers the state legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.

In their final days of the 2024 legislative session, Iowa lawmakers approved $8.9 billion in state spending for the upcoming year, financing the state government and public services. Most of those decisions now await a thumbs up or down from the governor.

Appropriations bills included funding for topics discussed often this session, like increasing pay for Iowa judges, as well as spending cuts to Area Education Agencies (AEAs), the provider of special education and other school support services in Iowa.

Budget bills can also include policy components. This year, language restricting on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the state’s public universities was passed as part of the education spending bill.

For the sixth time in the past decade, an abortion-related case is pending before the Iowa Supreme Court.

The only certainty is that the court will issue some majority opinion in the latest iteration of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland v Reynolds. All seven justices participated in the April 11 oral arguments.

The law at issue, adopted during a special legislative session last July, is almost identical to the near-total abortion ban at the center of last year’s case. But after Justice Dana Oxley recused herself from the 2023 litigation, the other justices split 3-3, leaving a permanent injunction on the 2018 abortion ban in place.

In all likelihood, the Iowa Supreme Court will decide before the end of June whether to lift the temporary injunction on the new abortion ban. Normally, it’s not advisable to guess how any justice will rule following oral arguments. We can draw more inferences here, because all seven justices have written or joined opinions that are relevant to the current case.

This post is designed to help readers understand the legal context and key arguments for each side.

State Senator Dan Dawson presents Senate File 2349, regarding defense subpoenas, during floor debate on February 27. Screenshot from official video.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

What were they thinking? That is a question I ask myself a lot lately.

Those were the first words out of my mouth when the Manhattan district attorney had to postpone Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial on the alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels — the delay necessitated because government lawyers had dropped the ball.

I muttered those words during several days of court hearings in Georgia into Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis’ affair with a subordinate prosecutor — the one she chose to lead the criminal case against Trump and a dozen other defendants for trying to undo that state’s 2020 presidential election results.

And those words come to mind about bills the Iowa legislature is considering that would affect criminal cases like those brought against state university athletes for their online wagers on sporting events.

Some Iowa news headlines misrepresented an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on February 27, which resolved a long-running lawsuit over Iowa’s 2021 law banning schools from requiring masks.

“Federal appeals court upholds Iowa law banning school mask mandates,” read the headline on a Cedar Rapids Gazette story, also published in some of the Lee Newspapers.

KCRG-TV’s version (carried by other television stations with the same owner) was titled “Federal appeals court upholds Iowa ban on mask mandates.”

“Appeals court upholds law banning mask mandates in schools,” read the headline on Iowa Capital Dispatch, a website that allows Iowa newspapers to republish its reporting at no charge.

The framing closely tracked written statements from Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird, who hailed the Eighth Circuit decision.

There was just one problem: the appeals court did not “uphold” the law.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on October 4, 2023.

The longest writing I’ve seen by Alexander Clark appears on page 1 of this newspaper two days after Christmas 1883.

The editors give the title “CIVIL RIGHTS” with subtitle “Views of a Distinguished Colored Citizen on the Subject.”

Apparently their readers knew enough—and cared enough—about the subject to slog through two full-length columns, most of the non-advertising content of the page. His letter comes to well over 2,000 words, maybe as much as three times my column here.

The Iowa Board of Medicine has unanimously approved a new version of administrative rules related to a near-total abortion ban Republicans hope to enforce in the future.

The law, known as House File 732, is currently enjoined under a Polk County District Court order, which the state has appealed. If the Iowa Supreme Court eventually allows the ban to go into effect, the administrative rules would provide some guidance to physicians on how to approach the law’s (mostly unworkable) exceptions.

The revisions approved during a February 15 teleconference meeting address some objections physicians raised when the board discussed the rules in November and January. However, they do not change the reality that the rules don’t match how doctors normally interact with patients seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

My five-year effort to gain a seat on the Iowa House press bench ended less than five days after the Institute for Free Speech filed a federal lawsuit on my behalf.

House Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson informed me shortly after 5:00 pm on January 23 that the Iowa House approved my application for work space, and a spot has been reserved for me in the press box on the floor of the House chamber.

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past 12 years.

North Dakota officials were pulling no punches during an informational session held in Bismarck last month, highlighting the importance of the Summit Carbon pipeline to both the sustainable aviation fuel market and enhanced oil recovery efforts in the Bakken.

During a December 20, 2023, BEK TV special report that broadcast a Friends of Ag and Energy public information session on the Summit Carbon pipeline, held at Bismarck State College’s National Energy Center of Excellence, Governor Doug Burgum said, “Sustainable aviation fuel, if you want to call it the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuel, it’s going to happen somewhere between North Dakota and Iowa and in between, the corn belt.”

Kathleen Neset, a geologist and owner of Neset Consulting Service Inc. who moderated the panel, spoke after Burgum, stating the following at the outset:

“The First Amendment prohibits government officials from arbitrarily denying reporters access to official information, and from discriminating against reporters based on their viewpoint,” declares a federal lawsuit filed on my behalf on January 19. Yet since 2019, the Iowa House Chief Clerk “has arbitrarily applied an ever-shifting credentialing system” to limit my “ability to gather and report political news” from the Iowa House chamber.

The Institute for Free Speech filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, making four claims under the U.S. Constitution. First, by denying me access to the Iowa House press bench, where other statehouse reporters can closely observe House debate and attend regular briefings by House Speaker Pat Grassley, Chief Clerk Meghan Nelson is violating my First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press.

Second, the complaint also states that Nelson’s policy, limiting access to reporters who provide “nonpartisan news to a broad segment of the public,” amounts to unconstitutional content-based and viewpoint-based discrimination, on its face and as applied to me.

Third, Nelson’s press credential policy “constitutes a prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment.” Chief Clerk Nelson has “unbridled discretion” to grant reporters access to the House press box, and “relies on the undefined, broad terms of the credential policy to subjectively exclude news media and deprive them of the ability to gather news in a manner equal to that afforded to other media representatives.”

Finally, the suit asserts that the press credential policy is vague in violation of my “First Amendment rights to free speech and press and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.”

Before Iowa politics kicks into high gear with a new legislative session and the caucuses, I want to highlight the investigative reporting, in-depth analysis, and accountability journalism published first or exclusively on this site last year.

Some newspapers, websites, and newsletters put their best original work behind a paywall for subscribers, or limit access to a set number of free articles a month. I’m committed to keeping all Bleeding Heartland content available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. That includes nearly 500 articles and commentaries from 2023 alone, and thousands more posts in archives going back to 2007.

To receive links to everything recently published here via email, subscribe to the free Evening Heartland newsletter. I also have a free Substack, which is part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Subscribers receive occasional cross-posts from Bleeding Heartland, as well as audio files and recaps for every episode of KHOI Radio’s “Capitol Week,” a 30-minute show about Iowa politics co-hosted by Dennis Hart and me.

I’m grateful to all readers, but especially to tipsters. Please reach out with story ideas that may be worth pursuing in 2024.

Iowa’s Republican legislators, Governor Kim Reynolds, and Senator Chuck Grassley inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts during the year that just ended. But putting this list together was trickier than my previous efforts to highlight the site’s articles or commentaries that resonated most with readers.

For fifteen years, I primarily used Google Analytics to track site traffic. Google changed some things this year, prompting me to switch to Fathom Analytics (an “alternative that doesn’t compromise visitor privacy for data”) in July. As far as I could tell during the few days when those services overlapped, they reached similar counts for user visits, page views, and other metrics. But the numbers didn’t completely line up, which means the Google Analytics data I have for posts published during the first half of the year may not be the same numbers Fathom would have produced.

Further complicating this enterprise, I cross-post some of my original reporting and commentary on a free email newsletter, launched on Substack in the summer of 2022 as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Some of those posts generated thousands of views that would not be tabulated as visits to Bleeding Heartland. I didn’t include Substack statistics while writing this piece; if I had, it would have changed the order of some posts listed below.

UPDATE: Attorney General Brenna Bird filed notice of appeal to the Eighth Circuit on January 12. Original post follows.

The state of Iowa cannot enforce key parts of a new law that sought to ban books depicting sex acts from schools and prohibit instruction “relating to gender identity and sexual orientation” from kindergarten through sixth grade.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher issued a preliminary injunction on December 29, putting what he called “staggeringly broad” provisions on hold while two federal lawsuits challenging Senate File 496 proceed. The judge found the book bans “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny,” and the teaching restrictions “void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

However, the state may continue to enforce a provision requiring school administrators to inform parents or guardians if a student seeks an “accommodation that is intended to affirm the student’s gender identity.” Judge Locher found the LGBTQ students who are plaintiffs in one case lack standing to challenge that provision, since “they are all already ‘out’ to their families and therefore not affected in a concrete way” by it.

Governor Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird quickly criticized the court’s decision. But neither engaged with the legal issues at hand.

Image of frequently banned books by On The Run Photo is available via Shutterstock. All books shown here have been removed from multiple Iowa school districts, according to the Des Moines Register’s database.

A federal judge will soon decide whether to block enforcement of all or part of an Iowa law that imposed many new regulations on public school libraries and educators.

Two groups of plaintiffs filed suit last month challenging Senate File 496 as unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Among other things, the law prohibits school libraries and classrooms from offering “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” It also forbids schools from providing “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through grade six.”

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher of the Southern District of Iowa did not consolidate the cases, which contain some overlapping arguments. But he did consolidate the hearings on the plaintiffs’ requests for a temporary injunction, which would prevent the state from enforcing certain provisions of SF 496 while litigation proceeds.

Near the end of that December 22 hearing in Des Moines, the judge said he will rule on whether to issue an injunction by January 1, when provisions allowing the state to investigate or discipline educators or school districts for certain violations will take effect.

Attorneys for the state advanced several misleading or contradictory legal arguments at the hearing and in briefs filed last week.

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.

For the second time in three years, Governor Kim Reynolds refused to act on a slate of nominees approved by one of Iowa’s regional judicial nominating commissions.

In early November, Reynolds took the “extraordinary step” of returning one candidate to the District 2B Judicial Nominating Commission. She eventually appointed Ashley Sparks to fill the District Court vacancy, but only after the commission held an additional meeting (at the governor’s request) to nominate a second eligible candidate for the judgeship.

The sequence of events raises questions about the governor’s legal authority to intervene when a judicial nominating commission has not adequately discharged its duties.

The situation also raises broader questions about the District 2B Judicial Nominating Commission. In November 2021, Reynolds refused to fill a vacancy in the same district after determining a judge’s “unprofessional” conduct had tainted the selection process. Since then, the District 2B commission—unlike all of its counterparts around the state—has not followed statutory and constitutional provisions that call for the senior judge of a district to chair such bodies.

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.”

Nancy Dugan lives in Altoona, Iowa and has worked as an online editor for the past twelve years.

A Polk County District Court has dismissed a legal challenge to a water permit linked to Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed CO2 pipeline. But the attorney for the petitioners indicated this won’t be the last attempt to derail the permits Summit-linked LLCs will need for carbon capture facilities.

As Bleeding Heartland previously reported, the suit filed by Kimberly Junker, Candice Brandau Larson, and Kathy Carter sought to review the decision by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to issue “a water withdrawal permit pursuant to Iowa Code § 455B.265.”

“Upon review of the Motion and the court file, the court finds and concludes that the Motion is supported by good cause and should be granted for the reasons stated in the Motion,” District Court Judge Jeanie Vaudt wrote in her brief November 7 order.

Five of the eight Iowa counties with the largest Black populations “had trial juries that were fully representative of their jury-eligible Black population” during 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to data analyzed by the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP. However, trial juries in Polk County and Scott County failed to hit that benchmark, and Dubuque County was “particularly problematic,” with zero Black members of any trial jury during the eighteen-month period reviewed.

The same review indicated that trial juries in Linn and Woodbury counties were close to being representative of the area’s jury-eligible Latino population, while Latinos were underrepresented on juries in Johnson, Marshall, Scott, and Polk counties, and particularly in Muscatine County.

Russell Lovell and David Walker, retired Drake Law School professors who co-chair the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP Legal Redress Committee, examined juror data provided by the Iowa Judicial Branch and presented their findings at the 11th Annual Iowa Summit on Justice and Disparities in Ankeny on November 3.