Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.

A constitutional showdown taking shape in southern Iowa’s Decatur County could put taxpayers on the hook financially to defend the county’s efforts to silence a critic of public officials there.

The Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm, wrote to Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson last week expressing its concerns about Wilson’s recent threat to Rita Audlehelm that she could be sued for defamation for her comments in a letter to the editor published in the Leon Journal-Reporter.

Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes openness and transparency in Iowa’s state and local governments. He can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.

When Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and others discussed the need for a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, Decatur County, Iowa, was still a half century off in the future.

Now, 236 years later, the county’s top law enforcement official needs a refresher on the intent of the 45 words the Founding Fathers settled on when drafting the First Amendment.

County Attorney Alan Wilson ought to review three of the five fundamental freedoms the First Amendment protects: the freedoms of speech, of the press, and to petition the government for a “redress of grievances.”

Exercising those rights is exactly what Rita Audlehelm of Van Wert did in a letter to the editor the Leon Journal-Reporter published on February 5.