What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The more I hear about “Making a Murderer,” the more tempted I am to become a Netflix subscriber so I can watch the ten-part documentary myself. The series follows the case of Steven Avery, released from prison after 18 years when DNA evidence showed he was innocent of the rape for which he had been convicted. A few years later, Avery and his teenage nephew Brendan Dassey were charged and convicted of murdering Teresa Halbach. The documentary suggests that Avery and Dassey, who are both serving life sentences, did not kill Halbach and did not receive fair trials.

Lee Rood has a front-page feature in today’s Des Moines Register about how problems highlighted in “Making a Murderer” point to the need for criminal justice reforms in Iowa, such as “uniform best practices for eyewitnesses and the mandatory recording of law enforcement interrogations.” I’ve enclosed excerpts after the jump, but I strongly recommend clicking through to read her whole story.

Avery’s wrongful conviction for rape rested primarily on eyewitness testimony. The latest edition of the New Yorker contains an excellent piece by Paul Kix on how a similar “travesty led to criminal-justice innovation in Texas.” Passages enclosed below cite Iowa State University Psychology Professor Gary Wells, who “has spent decades researching ways in which police lineups can be made more accurate.” Wells testified at a hearing seeking to exonerate a man who had died in prison, serving time for a rape he did not commit. Some of Wells’ recommendations for improving police identification practices were incorporated into a Texas law.

Those measures are different from the reforms an Iowa working group proposed and Governor Terry Branstad endorsed in his speech to state lawmakers this week. But with statehouse Republicans and Democrats deeply divided over education spending, Medicaid privatization, and Planned Parenthood funding, criminal justice reform may provide a rare opportunity for bipartisan cooperation this year. I hope members of the Iowa House and Senate who applauded Branstad’s call to reduce racial disparities will also consider some of the steps Texas has taken to prevent wrongful convictions.

Speaking recently to the Marshall Project, the rape survivor whose mistaken eyewitness testimony sent Avery to prison during the 1980s recounted how seeing a picture of her real attacker doesn’t stir up any emotion for her. In contrast, she says, “I still see Steven Avery as my assailant even though I understand he wasn’t.” I have read other accounts of traumatic memories being altered so that misremembered details evoke panic and terror. The way trauma affects the mind and body and the malleability of traumatic memories are major themes in Dr. Peter Levine’s latest book Trauma and Memory. I hadn’t heard of the book until I received a copy from a friend who found Levine’s approach to healing trauma life-changing.

A videotaped confession by Avery’s “low-functioning” nephew became a key part of the prosecution’s case in the trial that is the focus of “Making a Murderer.” Des Moines defense attorney Gary Dickey told Rood, “Set aside Avery’s innocence or guilt, the most striking thing of the whole series is the clearly coerced confession of Brendan Dassey.” It is surprisingly easy to manipulate a person to admit doing things that never happened, as shown by the New York Police Department’s ability to obtain false confessions from five teenagers accused of assaulting the “Central Park jogger” during the 1980s. Discussing that notorious crime, Saul Kassin, Psychology Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Williams College, pointed out that “in some cases people accused of crimes, particularly kids and others who are limited intellectually, become so confused by the lies that they actually come to believe they have committed this crime they did not commit.”

A chapter in Trauma and Memory focuses on “the pitfall of false memory,” such as when therapists (either unscrupulous or well-meaning) induce patients to believe wrongly that they suffered ritual or sexual abuse as children. At the end of this post, I enclose a passage from Levine’s book addressing “malevolent police interrogation methods” used to implant inaccurate memories and thereby obtain false confessions or wrongful convictions.

Among other things, the final installment of “Making a Murderer” covers a post-script to the Avery case: the downfall of District Attorney Ken Kratz, who prosecuted Avery and Dassey. Ryan Foley, an Associated Press correspondent in Iowa, was working for the AP in Wisconsin when he reported that Kratz “sent repeated text messages trying to spark an affair with a domestic abuse victim while he was prosecuting her ex-boyfriend.” Kratz lost his job over that despicable abuse of power, which he later blamed on mental health conditions and prescription drug dependence. All journalism students should listen to Foley’s interview with Kratz before the story appeared, a fascinating example of a newsmaker trying to intimidate a reporter. In quite a show of interrogation techniques, the DA warned that a “hatchet story” on his inappropriate behavior would reveal the journalist to be a “tool” for someone else’s political agenda. Kratz modulated his voice frequently–lecturing, mocking, shouting, even whispering–hoping to throw Foley off balance and trick him into revealing his sources.

Last year, racial disparities in Iowa’s criminal justice system were a major theme of Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady’s annual Condition of the Judiciary report to state legislators. Today Cady followed up by telling Iowa House and Senate members how the judicial branch is addressing the problem through training judges and staff, pilot programs aimed at reducing school referrals to juvenile court, early steps to change the rules on pretrial release of those charged with crimes, and better jury selection procedures. I’ve posted the relevant sections of his 2016 Condition of the Judiciary speech (as prepared) below. The full text is available here. Click through to read sections focusing on what Cady has described as the justice system’s six priorities:

• Protect Iowa’s children
• Provide full-time access to justice
• Operate an efficient full-service court system
• Provide faster and less costly resolution of legal disputes
• Operate in an open and transparent way
• Provide fair and impartial justice for all

Near the end of his speech, Cady discussed the largely unknown problem of human trafficking, which “exists as a dark underworld in many communities across Iowa and is associated with some of Iowa’s most iconic places and events.” I enclose those remarks at the end of this post. For more background on what trafficking looks like in Iowa, listen to this Iowa Public Radio program from 2012 or read Annie Easker’s investigative report for Iowa Watch. Bridget Garrity’s feature on a documentary film about trafficking is another good read. After advocates for trafficking victims raised awareness of Iowa’s poor legal framework for fighting such crimes, state legislators passed and Governor Terry Branstad signed major bills on trafficking during the 2014 and 2015 legislative sessions.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that Chief Justice Cady is a contender for all-time best appointee during Branstad’s oh-so-long tenure as governor. Who else is in his league?

Governor Terry Branstad delivered his annual Condition of the State address to members of the Iowa House and Senate and the Iowa Supreme Court justices yesterday. If you missed the speech, the full prepared text is here. Iowa Public Television posted the video and transcript here. The early part of the 30-minute address included one false or misleading assertion after another.

· “Sound budgeting practices and fiscal discipline now have us ranked as the 3rd best managed state in the nation.” Contrary to the idea that Branstad markedly improved Iowa’s operation, a major investors group also ranked Iowa the third best-managed state in 2010 under Governor Chet Culver, recognizing Iowa’s good fiscal position, high credit ratings from leading agencies, and low debt per capita compared to most other states.

· “The Iowa Economy has created 214,000 new jobs; surpassing our 2010 goal.” Sorry, no. That’s a fake statistic no economist would accept. It’s a shame the governor has instructed Iowa Workforce Development to keep cooking the books on employment.

· “If the state fails to implement managed care, the growth of Medicaid spending will consume virtually all of our revenue growth.” The Branstad administration has not been able to demonstrate that managed care will save the state money. Florida’s Medicaid privatization turned out to be more costly without improving patient care.

I was also disappointed not to hear more specifics about how Branstad envisions spending funds he would like to divert from school infrastructure to water programs. What kind of water quality programs would be prioritized, and who would administer them? Then again, details about this plan may be irrelevant, because Iowa House and Senate leaders don’t sound open to the idea.

For now, I want to focus on a much more promising part of Branstad’s address. To my surprise, the governor devoted a major section–roughly eight minutes of speaking time–to advocating for criminal justice reforms proposed by a working group he appointed in August. The group was charged with developing ideas to increase fairness and reduce racial disparities in Iowa’s criminal justice system. Click here to read the full recommendations released in November. Bleeding Heartland will discuss some of the proposals in more detail in future posts. Advocates for defendants’ rights and racial justice have generally welcomed the proposals.

Although some policies do not go far enough, and other important reforms are missing from the document, I’m encouraged to see the governor apply some political capital toward reducing systemic racism and inequities in the justice system. I enclose below the relevant portion of Branstad’s speech, with some annotations.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot to mention one thing Branstad could do immediately to address a massive racial disparity in Iowa. His executive order making it extremely difficult for felons to regain their voting rights disenfranchises Iowans of all ethnic backgrounds but disproportionately affects racial minorities.

Hoping to improve on my percentages from last year, I offer sixteen Iowa politics predictions for 2016. Please spin your own scenarios in this thread.

I finally gave up on trying to predict whether Governor Terry Branstad will still be in office at the end of the year. Although his close adviser David Roederer “emphatically” says Branstad will serve out his sixth term, I am convinced the governor will resign early. But I can’t decide whether that will happen shortly after the November 2016 election or shortly after the Iowa legislature’s 2017 session.

Speaking shortly after the 2014 general election, Iowa’s senior U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised to “work to confirm consensus nominees” for the federal bench, based on factors such as “intellectual ability, respect for the Constitution, fidelity to the law, personal integrity, appropriate judicial temperament, and professional competence.”

But as the Alliance for Justice noted in a recent report on judicial confirmations in 2015,

Only 11 [federal] judges were confirmed, the fewest in a single year since 1960. Only one court of appeals judge was confirmed, the worst since none were confirmed in 1953. And as confirmations dwindled, vacancies shot up. In 2015, vacancies rose from 43 to 66 (they’ll hit 70 by January 1), and officially-designated “judicial emergencies” went up nearly 160% from 12 to 31.

I enclose below the full Alliance for Justice review, with graphs comparing judicial confirmations by year for the last three presidents and during the seventh year of office for the last four two-term presidents. Click here to access the report online, where you can follow the hyperlinks.

Two nominees for judicial vacancies in Iowa are among 14 “consensus” nominees whose confirmations did not come up on the Senate floor before the winter recess, contrary to what was once “routine practice” in the Senate. People for the American Way pointed out in a November 9 blog post that even though Grassley “promised to process [judicial] nominees in the order he received them,” he “leapfrogged” Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger, whom President Barack Obama nominated in mid-September, “over ten longer-waiting district court nominees.” Ebinger would fill a vacancy in Iowa’s Southern District, which is not a judicial emergency. Most of the non-controversial nominees left hanging until the new year would alleviate judicial emergencies; see the appendix to the Alliance for Justice report.

Jennifer Bendery reported today for the Huffington Post that the growing number of vacancies and emergencies are

hurting the court system — and the people it serves. Civil cases are being delayed for years at a time. Judges are burning out trying to keep up. Semi-retired judges are pulling full-time hours to help keep their courts from collapsing under their own weight. The Senate is effectively strangling parts of the judicial system.

“They’re a co-equal branch,” [Carl] Tobias [a scholar of federal judicial selection at the University of Richmond School of Law] said. “Especially in Texas or the border states or the eastern district of California, these judges are just overwhelmed. They carry huge caseloads.”

Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s authority to veto funding intended to keep two in-patient mental health facilities open. Twenty Democratic state lawmakers and the president of Iowa’s largest public-employee union filed the lawsuit in July, arguing that the governor’s line-item vetoes violated Iowa Code provisions requiring that the state “shall operate” mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. But Judge Staskal found that “Existing statutes cannot limit the Governor’s item veto authority,” which “is of constitutional magnitude. The only limitations that have been placed on that authority have been derived from the language of the constitution itself. […] And, there is no language in the item veto provision which suggests a statutory limitation on the power it creates. It is elementary that, to the extent there is conflict between a constitutional provision and a statute, the constitution prevails.”

I enclose below longer excerpts from the court ruling, which can be read in full here. Mark Hedberg, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, told Bleeding Heartland they “are preparing an appeal” to the Iowa Supreme Court “and will ask that it be expedited.”

Ten days after ending his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, former U.S. Senator Jim Webb appears to be leaning toward an independent candidacy. His guest editorial in today’s Washington Post is titled, “America needs an independent presidential candidate.” Excerpt:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) notwithstanding, the Democratic Party has coalesced around a member of a powerful, moneyed dynasty whom at this point most Americans do not trust and half do not like. If successful, she would guarantee further gridlock; if unsuccessful, she could lead the Democratic Party to the same dismal results it experienced in the elections in 2010 and 2014.

Tectonic shifts occur slowly but eventually they produce earthquakes. It is becoming ever clearer that we are on the cusp of a new era in U.S. politics, driven by the reality that a large percentage of Americans really do dislike both political parties and their leaders. They want and deserve something different, and nowhere is that reality more clearly seen than in the presidential race, in which the extremes that have taken over the nominating process have become glaringly obvious.

There can be no better answer to these developments than electing as president a tested, common-sense independent who can bring to Washington a bipartisan administration to break the gridlock paralyzing our political debates and restore the faith of our people in their leaders.

I am in the process of deciding whether to mount such a campaign. Clearly, the need for another option grows stronger and more apparent by the day.

Disenchantment with the major political parties is nothing new. But if the much better-known independent candidate Ross Perot couldn’t win a single state after spending some $60 million on his 1992 presidential bid, how on earth does Webb think he could be elected next year? He’d need to raise an estimated $8 million just to get on the ballot in all 50 states. In his last fundraising quarter as a Democratic candidate, Webb raised less than $700,000.

For a fraction of the expense of running for president, Webb could become an influential nationwide advocate for criminal justice reform. I remain hopeful that after weighing the costs and benefits, Webb will reject a hopeless vanity bid in favor of an issue-based campaign to change this country for the better.

Six months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowledged that flawed testimony about hair analysis may have caused innocent people to be convicted of crimes, the State Public Defender’s office has created a new Wrongful Conviction Division “to determine whether similar errors have occurred in Iowa cases” and to “pursue available legal remedies.” I enclose below the press release announcing the new office, which will collaborate with Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the Innocence Project of Iowa, and the Midwest Innocence Project. People seeking to have their cases reviewed can submit this 12-page intake questionnaire (pdf).

State Public Defender Adam Gregg deserves credit for making this happen less than a year after Governor Terry Branstad appointed him to the job. (A former legislative liaison for Branstad, Gregg ran unsuccessfully for Iowa attorney general in 2014.) The press release indicates that Gregg repurposed a vacant position in his office using existing appropriations. Taking that route allowed him to move more quickly than if he had lobbied state lawmakers for funding to create a Wrongful Conviction Division. Gregg also hired a serious person to run the new division in Audrey McGinn, who spent four years as a staff attorney for the California Innocence Project. Scroll to the end of this post for more background on McGinn’s work.

Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reported from the October 26 press conference,

“What’s an acceptable error rate for our criminal justice system?” State Public Defender Adam Gregg asked this morning. “Even if we get it right 99 percent of the time and only get it wrong one percent of the time, that would mean there are over 80 innocent people currently incarcerated in Iowa prisons. And at what cost? To the state, it’s about $34,000 per year per inmate. But what about to their families, to their lives and to their sanity? And at what cost to public safety?”

Gregg said when the wrong person is convicted, that means the real criminal isn’t held accountable. The first batch of cases to be reviewed by this new division date back to the 1980s and early ’90s.

Criminal defense attorney Nick Sarcone commented to Bleeding Heartland, “I think this is an important step towards ensuring the integrity of our justice system. However, we need to spend more time, energy and money fixing the substantial issues which plague our system at the trial court level. We need to ensure this new unit is not investigating cases from 2015 in 2030.”

UPDATE: Added below criminal defense attorney Joseph Glazebrook’s reaction to this news.

After six years as U.S. attorney for Iowa’s Southern District, Nick Klinefeldt will leave that position next month to go back to private law practice. I enclose below the full press release on his departure. Among other things, the former defense attorney highlighted his work on national committees “to update and expand discovery policies to ensure defendants [in federal courts] receive all of the information they need to adequately defend themselves, and revamp sentencing practices to ensure the end result of a prosecution is fair.” He also

developed a comprehensive discovery policy for the Southern District of Iowa that ensures criminal defendants receive even more information about the case against them than is required by the rules and that they receive it quickly. This policy included the development of a Stipulated Discovery and Protective Order that is now universally used in all criminal cases across the district. United States Attorney Klinefeldt also changed the way the office utilized mandatory minimum sentences, to ensure that they were only used when absolutely necessary.

U.S. House race-watchers had their eye on Klinefeldt earlier this year as a possible Democratic candidate in Iowa’s third Congressional district, but I have never heard of Klinefeldt signaling any intention to run. In recent weeks, the local Democratic establishment has been consolidating around Jim Mowrer, one of two declared challengers to first-term Representative David Young. Today Klinefeldt confirmed that he is not planning to run for Congress, Grant Rodgers reported for the Des Moines Register.

UPDATE: Michael Gartner wrote an excellent commentary on Klinefeldt’s record for the Des Moines-based weekly Cityview. Scroll to the end of this post for excerpts.

Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination today. Warning that “The very nature of our democracy is under siege due to the power structure and the money that finances both political parties,” Webb said he will spend the next few weeks deciding whether to run for president as an independent. He still believes he “can provide the best leadership” to meet the country’s challenges and intends “to remain fully engaged in the debates that are facing us.”

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, recently estimated that getting on the ballot in all 50 states would cost about $8 million and would require a lot of organizational work. Webb asserted today, “I have no doubt that if I ran as an independent we would have significant financial help.” But his presidential campaign raised less than $700,000 during the entire third quarter. Nor did Webb build much of an organization, even in the early-nominating states.

Webb could devote the next year to seeking ballot access and public attention, winning a few percent of the vote in the best-case scenario. Or, he could influence a salient public policy debate that is close to his heart with a much smaller investment of his time and other people’s money.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Former State Senator Kent Sorenson testified this week in the trial of two former Ron Paul presidential campaign aides. (A judge dismissed charges against a third man who had been indicted in the same case.) After initially claiming to be the victim of a “straight-up political witch hunt,” Sorenson eventually pled guilty to federal charges related to accepting hidden payments. He had been negotiating with Paul’s operatives for months on a price for changing his allegiance from presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to Paul less than a week before the Iowa caucuses.

Russ Choma wrote up Sorenson’s testimony for Mother Jones, and Grant Rodgers has been covering the trial for the Des Moines Register. On Thursday, Sorenson testified that he was upset when some staffers for Michele Bachmann’s campaign treated him “like a leper,” after he revealed that he had considered switching to Paul and was offered money to do so. Dude, what did you expect? Asking to be paid for a presidential endorsement should get a person shunned from polite society. People with leprosy should take offense at being compared to a guy like you.

Sorenson said in court the next day that going into politics was “a waste of my life, and I wish I had not done it.” I would guess a large number of Iowans in both parties also wish he had never gotten involved with politics.

Ten days ago, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal heard arguments in a case challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s veto of funding for two in-patient mental health facilities his administration decided to close earlier this year. In one exchange, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Thompson asserted that the governor could theoretically shut down the state’s court system by exercising his veto power to reject all appropriated funds for the judiciary. He noted that the constitution gives state lawmakers power to override a governor’s veto (through a two-thirds majority vote in both the Iowa House and Senate), and courts should not take on that role if legislators decline to do so.

I would like to hear attorneys’ opinions on whether the governor’s veto power extends so far. Can the governor eliminate virtually any part of state government by blocking appropriations for it, as long as at least one-third plus one member of one chamber of the legislature will back up his political agenda?

I’ve posted excerpts from these reports after the jump.

A U.S. District Court ruling in August inspired today’s edition of Throwback Thursday. That ruling struck down an Idaho law making it a crime to lie to obtain employment at an agricultural facility, among other things. Iowa was the first state to adopt what critics call an “ag gag” law, aimed at making it harder for animal rights or food safety activists to obtain undercover recordings at farms or slaughterhouses. Idaho’s law went further than the bill Governor Terry Branstad signed in 2012; for instance, the Idaho statute also banned unauthorized audio or video recordings at a livestock farm or processing facility. Still, to this non-lawyer, some passages of federal Judge Lyn Winmill’s ruling (pdf) suggested that Iowa’s prohibition on “agricultural production facility fraud” might also violate the U.S. Constitution, specifically the First Amendment’s free speech clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Bleeding Heartland posted relevant excerpts from the Idaho ruling here, along with a brief legislative history of House File 589.

I sought Governor Terry Branstad’s comment on the court ruling and whether Iowa lawmakers should amend or rescind the language in Iowa Code about “agricultural production facility fraud.” In response, the governor’s communications director Jimmy Centers provided this statement on August 6:

House File 589 passed with bipartisan support and under the advice and counsel of the Attorney General’s office. The governor has not had the opportunity to review the ruling from the federal court in Idaho and, as such, does not have a comment on the case.

“Under the advice and counsel of the Attorney General’s office” didn’t sound right to me. When I looked further into the story, I learned that the Iowa Attorney General’s office neither recommended passage of this law nor signed off on its contents.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee elected Danny Homan to serve as first vice chair today. Homan is the longtime president of AFSCME Iowa Council 61, the state’s largest public-employee union. He is a frequent critic of Governor Terry Branstad and has been a plaintiff in several lawsuits against the governor. Most recently, Homan and twenty Democratic state lawmakers challenged Branstad’s actions to close two state-run mental health institutions. A Polk County District Court judge just heard motions in that case on October 8 and is expected to rule during the next 30 days. Homan was also involved in the unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the governor’s closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home, as well as a case that produced a unanimous Iowa Supreme Court ruling saying Branstad had improperly exercised his veto power. However, that 2012 ruling did not force the state to reopen any Iowa Workforce Development field offices, the closure of which had prompted the lawsuit.

Jim Mowrer was elected first vice chair in January but stepped down from that position in August, when he launched his Congressional campaign in the third district.

Joe Stutler, a central committee member from Marion (Linn County) who is active on civil rights and veterans issues, also ran for first vice chair today. Stutler is currently vice chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Disability Caucus.

I enclose below the Iowa Democratic Party’s press release announcing Homan’s election.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

I spent most of Friday at the Iowa Environmental Council’s annual meeting, where as usual, I learned a lot from the conference speakers. (I’ve long been an active volunteer for the non-profit.) Chad Pregracke gave an inspiring and entertaining keynote address this year. Raised on the banks of the Mississippi River, Pregracke spent hours a day under its surface diving for mussels shells as a summer job. In his early 20s, he became obsessively committed to getting trash out of the river and cold-called businesses in the Quad Cities until he had enough funding for his first cleanup project. Favorable coverage from the Associated Press helped Pregracke raise more awareness and money. He later created the non-profit Living Lands and Waters, which has pulled a mind-blowing amount of trash out of waterways in twenty states. I am looking forward to reading Pregracke’s memoir From the Bottom Up: One Man’s Crusade to Clean America’s Rivers.

Several speakers at the Iowa Environmental Council conference discussed the Des Moines Water Works’ lawsuit against drainage districts in northwest Iowa’s Sac, Calhoun and Buena Vista Counties. The unprecedented lawsuit has angered many Iowa politicians, including Governor Terry Branstad, who has said the Water Works “ought to just tone it down and start cooperating and working with others […].” (Priceless response from Todd Dorman: “Tone it down? Tell it to the bloomin’ algae.”)

The most informative single piece I’ve seen about this litigation is Sixteen Things to Know About the Des Moines Water Works Proposed Lawsuit, a speech Drake University Law Professor Neil Hamilton gave at the 2015 Iowa Water Conference in Ames this March. The director of Drake’s Agricultural Law Center also wrote an excellent guest column for the Des Moines Register in May debunking the “strenuous effort” to convince Iowans that “the lawsuit is unfair and unhelpful.”

Last weekend, the Associated Press ran a series of well-researched articles on water infrastructure problems across the U.S. As a country, we were foolish not to invest more in infrastructure during and since the “Great Recession,” when interest rates have been at historically low levels. The AP reports underscore the mounting hidden and not-hidden costs of hundreds of municipalities deferring maintenance on water mains and equipment at treatment plants. After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from several of the stories, but if you want to be educated and appalled, click through to read them in their entirety: Ryan Foley, “Drinking water systems imperiled by failing infrastructure” and “Millions remain unspent in federal water-system loan program”; Justin Pritchard, “Availability of clean water can’t be taken for granted anymore”; and John Seewer, “Cities bear rising cost of keeping water safe to drink.”

Polk County District Court Chief Judge Arthur Gamble on Monday dismissed a lawsuit that challenged Iowa’s restrictions on felon voting and procedure for regaining voting rights after a felony conviction. Kelli Jo Griffin filed the lawsuit last November, having previously been acquitted on perjury charges related to registering to vote and casting a ballot in a local election. Griffin did not realize she was ineligible to vote because of a prior drug conviction. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa is representing her in the case, which claims Iowa law and an executive order Governor Terry Branstad issued in January 2011 unconstitutionally restrict the plaintiff’s fundamental right to vote.

A plurality of three Iowa Supreme Court justices indicated last April that they do not believe all felonies rise to the level of “infamous crimes,” which under the Iowa Constitution justify revoking citizenship rights. But that opinion did not strike down current Iowa law, which holds that any felony conviction leads to the loss of voting rights. Chief Judge Gamble noted in his ruling that he is bound by precedent on felon voting cases “until a majority of the Iowa Supreme Court” rules otherwise.

The chief judge also determined that Branstad’s executive order does not unconstitutionally restrict Griffin’s voting rights, because the paperwork and fees required are “not an unreasonable burden for a felon to shoulder.” His conclusions don’t acknowledge certain realities about the arduous process Branstad established, which “made Iowa one of the most difficult states in the nation for felons who want to vote” and create more hurdles for low-income Iowans than for those with financial resources. I enclose more thoughts on that angle below, after excerpts from Gamble’s ruling.

The ACLU will appeal the District Court’s decision to the Iowa Supreme Court. Ever since an unlikely chain of events opened the door for the high court to re-examine felon voting rights, it’s been obvious some non-violent offender like Griffin would bring a test case resembling this one. The big question now is whether Justice Brent Appel, who recused himself from last year’s related case, will align with his three colleagues who appear ready to declare that certain felonies are not “infamous crimes.”

Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal ruled yesterday that a lawsuit challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s line-item vetoes of mental health facility funding can move forward.

A group of Democratic state legislators and AFSCME, Iowa’s largest public employee union, filed the lawsuit in July. Last month, attorneys for the state filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit or force the plaintiffs to “recast” (revise and resubmit) their court filing.

But in a thirteen-page ruling, Judge Staskal rejected the state’s arguments that “the plaintiffs lack standing, have failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and that the case presents a nonjusticiable political question.” He found that AFSCME Iowa Council 61 President Danny Homan has standing because he represents the interests of state workers who were laid off when the state government closed in-patient mental health facilities in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant. The judge also noted that state legislators “have standing to challenge the propriety of the Governor’s exercise of his veto authority.” Judge Staskal found plaintiffs had stated a claim: “a challenge to the Governor’s exercise of his line-item veto authority.” As for the political question, the ruling noted, “Whether to close Clarinda and Mount Pleasant is a policy matter for the other branches of government. Whether the Governor’s particular use of his line-item veto power is constitutional is a matter for the courts.”

Judge Staskal did find in favor of one argument advanced by state attorneys, releasing Iowa Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer as a co-defendant: “The Director [Palmer] plainly has no authority to veto legislation and there is no allegation that he did veto legislation. Therefore, there is no conceivable set of facts upon which relief could be granted on the claim that the Director exercised an improper veto.”    

The legislators who joined this lawsuit are State Senators Rich Taylor, Tom Courtney, Janet Petersen, Tony Bisignano, Herman Quirmbach, and Dick Dearden, and State Representatives Bruce Hunter, Curt Hanson, Jerry Kearns, Mark Smith, Art Staed, Ako Abdul-Samad, Jo Oldson, Ruth Ann Gaines, Sharon Steckman, Todd Taylor, Mary Gaskill, Kirsten Running-Marquardt, Timi Brown-Powers, and Dave Jacoby.

I suppose it was inevitable that Representative Steve King would insert himself into the national debate over a Kentucky county clerk using her religious beliefs as an excuse not to do her job. King’s immediate reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality was to urge states to “just abolish civil marriage, let’s go back to holy matrimony the way it began.” A couple of weeks later, he introduced a Congressional resolution saying states “may refuse to be bound by the holding in Obergefell v. Hodges” and “are not required to license same-sex marriage or recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.”

This past weekend, King lit up Twitter by saying of the Rowan County clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses,

In 1963, we should not have honored SCOTUS decision to creat a wall of separation between prayer & school. Kim Davis for Rosa Parks Award.

On Tuesday, King doubled down in an interview with KSCJ radio in Sioux City: “Cheers for [Mike] Huckabee and [Ted] Cruz, whoever else has stepped up to defend Kim Davis. I think she deserves the Rosa Parks Award.”

Would you believe there was a time when King said calling for county officials to refuse to abide by a Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality was “no solution” in the battle to “protect marriage”?

Two months after the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled unconstitutional a proposed state ban on using telemedicine for abortions, the Iowa Board of Medicine and Governor Terry Branstad are at last ready to accept the court ruling as the final word on the subject.  

One of Iowa’s major investor-owned utilities has changed a policy that was impeding new solar power projects, Karen Uhlenhuth reported for Midwest Energy News over the weekend. Follow me after the jump for background and details on this excellent news.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Ryan Foley’s August 3 story for the Associated Press was disturbing on several levels. A “Serious Mismanagement Report” described a “decade of dysfunction” at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeast Iowa. Between 1999 and 2010, “78 construction projects costing a total of $3.4 million were approved there in violation of federal laws meant to protect archaeological resources and historic sites.” Also troubling: National Park Service officials have suppressed the report’s publication and recently denied that it existed. They have commissioned another team to write a separate (less critical) review of Effigy Mounds operations. National Park Service deputy regional director Patricia Trap delivered some unintentional comedy when she said, “I’m not denying some serious mismanagement […] But also there were actions taken along the way that were actually appropriate management.” I’m so relieved to know that Effigy Mounds officials handled some matters appropriately in addition to the seventy-eight projects that failed to comply with federal law.

Iowa Public Radio’s Morning Edition with Clay Masters interviewed Foley about the mismanagement and next steps at Effigy Mounds. Click through for the audio and transcript.

The Des Moines Register published a front-page piece by Grant Rodgers on August 5 about the “uncertain future” for Iowa’s regional drug courts. Those courts steer defendants into treatment rather than prison, turning lives around at lower cost than incarceration. “Yet despite their popularity among prosecutors, judges and community leaders, several Iowa drug courts have experienced sluggish legislative funding – so much so that they now are in jeopardy,” Rodgers reports. What a classic case of penny-wise and pound-foolish budgeting by state legislators who brag to their constituents about fiscal responsibility. With an ending balance (surplus) of at least $300 million expected for Iowa’s budget in the 2016 fiscal year, it’s ridiculous that the drug court in Council Bluffs will shut down on October 1, with courts in Burlington and Ottumwa “at risk of closing” later this year.

The front page of today’s Sunday Des Moines Register features a depressing must-read by Tony Leys about former residents of the now-closed Iowa Mental Health Institute at Clarinda, which “cared for some of the frailest and most complicated psychiatric patients in the state.” Of the eighteen people who lived in the Clarinda facility earlier this year, eight

were transferred to four traditional nursing homes, all of which are rated “below average” or “much below average” on a federal registry. The four facilities are in the bottom 29 percent of Iowa nursing homes for overall quality, according to the Medicare registry. Two of those eight patients died shortly after their transfers.

I’ve enclosed excerpts from all of the above stories after the jump, but I recommend clicking through to read the articles in their entirety.

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.

The New York Times Magazine featured an article around the life of a former gang member and addict, Dr. Jesse De La Cruz, who currently serves as an expert witness in some California jury trials.  His testimony has convinced juries on some occasions that a person is not a gang member.  That’s not to say that the defendant was not convicted of a crime; it’s just that he wasn’t convicted of being a gang member.

Less than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court majority struck down state-level bans on same-sex marriages, at least two county clerks in Kentucky have refused to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples, prompting a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky on behalf of four couples. One of the county clerks has decided to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone in her county so that she can’t be forced to perform that service for LGBT citizens. How embarrassing. You want nothing to do with same-sex marriages? Go work for a church that doesn’t recognize them.

I’m so proud that to my knowledge, no county recorder in Iowa ever used his or her religious convictions as an excuse for not doing a secular job in a professional way.

Not for lack of trying by some social conservative activists, egged on by certain Iowa Republican lawmakers. Follow me after the jump for a walk down memory lane and a list of Iowa counties where LGBT couples have exercised their right to marry since 2009.

The best news in Iowa this week came out of a federal courtroom in Cedar Rapids. As Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press, “Iowa’s second-largest power company agreed Wednesday to drastically cut pollution at several coal-fired power plants under a Clean Air Act settlement that’s expected to make the air safer and easier to breathe around the state.” You can read the full consent decree here and the complaint filed against the Alliant Energy subsidiary Interstate Power and Light here.

Huge credit for the victory goes to the Sierra Club Iowa chapter. Foley reports that this federal government enforcement action “started in 2011 when the Sierra Club filed a notice accusing the company [Interstate Power and Light] of violating the Clean Air Act.” The Sierra Club advocates for a range of policies to reduce air pollution and Iowa’s reliance on coal to generate electricity.

I enclose below highlights from Foley’s article and five reasons the changes at the affected power plants will save Iowans’ lives.

The agreement U.S. officials reached with Interstate Power and Light is also an encouraging sign that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision against the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule on mercury emissions is at most a temporary setback for clean air. In some communities, the court’s ruling won’t even slow down efforts to convert coal-fired plants to other fuel sources.

If only Governor Terry Branstad, who has often spoken of his desire to make Iowa the “healthiest state,” could recognize the benefits of burning less coal. Although Branstad was happy to bask in the reflected glory of new pollution controls at one of the affected Interstate Power and Light power plants, he welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the mercury rule, which the governor’s office characterized as a “misguided” EPA regulation.  

Iowa’s largest public employee union and 20 Democratic state legislators filed a lawsuit today challenging the closure of mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. I enclose below a press release from AFSCME Council 61, which lists the six state senators and fourteen state representatives who joined the lawsuit naming Governor Terry Branstad and Department of Human Services Director Chuck Palmer.

The Branstad administration announced plans in January to close two of Iowa’s four in-patient mental health facilities. State legislators were neither consulted nor notified in advance. The Department of Human Services started winding down operations well before the end of the 2015 fiscal year. Democrats fought to include funding for the Clarinda and Mount Pleasant institutes in the budget for the current fiscal year, but Branstad item-vetoed the appropriation. The lawsuit contends that closing the facilities violates Iowa Code, which holds that the state “shall operate” mental health institutes in Mount Pleasant and Clarinda. The governor’s communications director told KCCI that AFSCME’s leader in Iowa “is resistant to change” and that the closed “centers were not suited to offer modern mental health care.”

The Iowa legislature’s decision next year on whether to fund the Clarinda and Mount Pleasant facilities will be critically important. The Iowa Supreme Court recently dismissed the lawsuit challenging the closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home in 2014, without considering the merits of that case, on the grounds that the legislature made the issue “moot” by no longer appropriating state money to operate that facility. By refusing to include funding for the two closed mental health institutes in the budget for fiscal year 2017, Iowa House Republicans could bolster the Branstad administration’s efforts to defeat the lawsuit filed today.

UPDATE: Added more speculation about this lawsuit’s prospects below.

State Senator Jason Schultz weighed in last night on the controversy over Confederate flag displays: “I’m now convinced the whole Confederate flag issue is simply about progressives teaching the establishment R’s how to jump through hoops.”

During our ensuing dialogue, Schultz revealed the level of nuanced thinking and temperate choice of words one would expect from a Ted Cruz endorser.  

Having tried unsuccessfully to prevent federal courts from hearing cases about marriage rights, Representative Steve King (IA-04) introduced a resolution today that would express the U.S. House’s disagreement with last month’s U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion in Obergefell v Hodges.

King’s effort surely qualifies as the “strong message” he promised to send to the Supreme Court immediately after the Obergefell decision. But it is strikingly different from his response to the Iowa Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in 2009.

Since the Supreme Court of the United States issued its ruling in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, affirming the right of same-gender couples throughout the country to marry, some politicians and pundits have claimed religious liberty is now threatened in our nation.

“This decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty,” said Mike Huckabee. Bobby Jindal said the decision was the start of an “all-out assault on religious freedom.” Ted Cruz said, “Religious liberty has never been so threatened as it is today.”

Of course, that’s not true. The decision has no adverse impact on any religious institutions or faith leaders. In fact, the decision has quite the opposite impact. It’s a victory for religious liberty.  

Not for the first time and probably not for the last time, Governor Terry Branstad dropped a lot of line-item vetoes late in the afternoon before a holiday weekend. Early news reports are understandably focusing on the vetoes of one-time funding for K-12 education and state universities, as well as language that would have kept mental health institutions in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant open. Bleeding Heartland has a post in progress about the fallout from those actions and others, including Branstad’s decision to strike language that would have expanded child care assistance.

Democratic State Representative Sharon Steckman called attention to several other line-item vetoes that flew below the radar yesterday. One of them seems particularly important, as it could put the State of Iowa at odds with U.S. Department of Labor demands to “strengthen Iowa’s compliance with Federal law” and keep administrative law judges “free from actual or perceived intimidation.”

JULY 6 UPDATE: The vetoed language pertained to administrative law judges working for the Public Employment Relations Board, not Iowa Workforce Development; see further details below.

Nearly two weeks ago, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the state ban on using telemedicine for abortion. The unanimous decision is the end of the line for a rule the Iowa Board of Medicine adopted in the absence of medical evidence.

Yet Governor Terry Branstad isn’t the only person reluctant to take the Iowa Supreme Court’s no, no, no, no, no, no for an answer. Tony Leys reported for the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, “The Iowa Board of Medicine has huddled three times with its lawyers since losing a key state Supreme Court case this month, but has not yet decided whether to appeal or accept the decision.”

I don’t know what’s more surprising: that after three meetings, those attorneys still haven’t persuaded board members to quit while they’re behind, or that board members who didn’t participate in making the unconstitutional rule are considering hitching their wagons to this cause.

In a 5-4 decision announced Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states and ordered state governments to recognize same-sex marriages performed anywhere in the country. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell v Hodges, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer. Each of the dissenting justices wrote a separate opinion; all are available in this pdf file after Kennedy’s opinion. Amy Howe explained the majority opinion in “Plain English” while Lyle Denniston posted a brief analysis.

Follow me after the jump for Iowa reaction on both sides of the marriage debate. Two years ago, Bleeding Heartland compiled Iowa politicians’ comments on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Windsor, which struck down the federal ban on same-sex marriages but left state bans intact.

As a group, Iowa Democratic politicians are more enthusiastic and less cautious about welcoming marriage equality now than was the case in 2009, when the Iowa Supreme Court struck down our state’s Defense of Marriage Act. Many Iowa Republicans called for elected officials to overturn the 2009 Varnum v Brien ruling by passing a constitutional amendment, but reacting to the latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling, few in the Iowa GOP sounded hopeful that there was any chance to reinstate state bans on same-sex marriage.

I will update this post as needed.  

A unanimous Supreme Court ruling against your position is usually a sign that your legal arguments lack merit. But Governor Terry Branstad hasn’t learned that lesson from his administration being on the wrong end of not one, not two, but three unanimous Iowa Supreme Court rulings.

Last week, the court ruled with no dissenting justices that Iowa’s ban on using telemedicine to provide abortion services is unconstitutional. Three of the justices who concurred in the decision are Branstad appointees (Chief Justice Mark Cady and Justices Edward Mansfield and Thomas Waterman). Two of them–Waterman and Mansfield–have demonstrated in previous cases that they are reluctant to substitute their judgment for that of executive branch bodies responsible for rulemaking. Yet Branstad not only rejects the reasoning underlying the telemedicine ruling, but also refuses to accept legal experts’ determination that his administration cannot appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Some 40,000 Iowans will continue to receive federal subsidies for purchasing health insurance, thanks to a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court opinion announced today. Plaintiffs in King v Burwell had argued that Congress intended for subsidies to be available only to Americans who purchased health insurance through state-run exchanges. Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that interpretation in his opinion (pdf), joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Amy Howe explained the ruling in “plain English” at the SCOTUS blog, where Lyle Denniston wrote a separate analysis of the opinion.

Dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia accused his colleagues of changing “usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act,” as the Supreme Court majority did (in his view) when it upheld the individual mandate to purchase health insurance in 2012.

A ruling for the plaintiffs in King v Burwell would not only have threatened health care access for roughly 6.4 million people who receive subsidies for health insurance purchased through the federal website Healthcare.gov. It could have caused cascading effects such as sharp premium increases for millions of Americans who do not qualify for subsidies but would nevertheless have been priced out of the health insurance market. In theory, Congress could have fixed the problem with a one-paragraph bill clarifying that people who buy insurance through the federal exchange qualified for subsidies, but most House and Senate Republicans appeared unwilling to go that route.

Today’s Supreme Court decision removes the only remaining threat to federal health insurance subsidies for eligible Iowans. Last month, several insurance companies applied to offer policies for 2016 to Iowans through the exchange. Only one provider did so for 2015, and if that company had pulled out of Iowa, health insurance subsidies would not have been available to anyone in our state for next year.

UPDATE: Added Iowa political reaction below. Note that several of the Republican statements renew a vow to repeal and replace “Obamacare.” Though destroying the system created by the 2010 health care reform law was transparently the goal of the King v Burwell plaintiffs, their lawyers maintained the charade that the lawsuit was only about getting the Obama administration to follow the Affordable Care Act.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that Iowa’s ban on the use of telemedicine to provide abortion services was unconstitutional because it imposed an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion. You can read the whole ruling here (pdf). I’ve posted highlights after the jump, along with some reaction to the decision from both sides in the debate.

A few points are worth remembering.

Nearly four years have passed since Governor Terry Branstad and his senior staffers tried to strong-arm Iowa Workers Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey into resigning years before the end of his fixed term, but the lawsuit Godfrey filed in early 2012 won’t be heard in court anytime soon. Grant Rodgers reported for the Des Moines Register today that before the case goes to trial, the Iowa Supreme Court will rule on whether Godfrey “can invoke the Iowa Constitution to win monetary damages from the state in his lawsuit against Branstad, Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds and four former state officials.” Excerpts are after the jump, but you should click through to read the whole story. Godfrey’s attorney Roxanne Conlin appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court after Polk County District Court Judge Brad McCall “tossed out Godfrey’s four constitution-based claims in an April order.”

Last summer, a divided Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Godfrey could sue Branstad and five other administration officials individually for defamation, extortion and other claims, in addition to pursuing general claims and tort claims against the state of Iowa.  The governor contends that neither he nor his staffers discriminated against Godfrey, and that he was seeking to appoint a commissioner who would be more sympathetic to business owners. Depositions began in the fall of 2014, and a trial date had been set for November of this year. The Iowa Supreme Court is likely to resolve the new constitutional issue sometime in 2016.

This morning the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a lawsuit brought by Democratic state lawmakers and a public employee union leader to challenge the closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home without legislative input in the middle of the 2014 fiscal year. The seven justices reversed a Polk County District Court ruling from February 2014, which had ordered the Branstad administration to reopen the home.

The full text of Justice Edward Mansfield’s decision is available here (pdf). Follow me after the jump for key points and excerpts. The central factor in the ruling was the Iowa legislature’s failure to appropriate funds to operate the Iowa Juvenile Home for the 2015 fiscal year.

Today’s news is a classic example of elections having consequences. Had Democrats recaptured the Iowa House majority in 2012, which could easily have happened with better allocation of resources, lawmakers in both chambers would have funded the home for girls during the 2014 legislative session. That in turn would have prompted the Iowa Supreme Court to view the lawsuit over the juvenile home closure differently.

The Iowa Department of Transportation is standing behind its ruling that limited the use of traffic cameras in several large Iowa cities. The DOT adopted new rules in late 2013 to limit local governments’ ability to install traffic cameras on or near highways. Those rules required cities to demonstrate that cameras were needed to address “critical safety issues,” which could not be resolved by other means. Studies have produced conflicting data on whether cameras reduce red light or speeding infractions or vehicle accidents.

In March of this year, DOT officials ordered officials in six cities to shut off ten out of 34 traffic cameras cities had defended on safety grounds. The city of Davenport opted to comply with the DOT ruling, but five other cities asked department officials to reconsider the decision. (Although a reversal was unlikely, exhausting administrative appeals typically precedes legal action challenging a state agency’s decision.)

This week, DOT Director Paul Trombino notified city officials in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, and Muscatine that the department was rejecting their appeals, because data did not demonstrate that the disputed cameras had improved safety or reduced crashes. Click through to read copies of the letters. The fifth city to appeal, Sioux City, filed a lawsuit last year challenging the DOT rules. A Woodbury County District Court is scheduled to hear that case soon. Des Moines officials plan to challenge the DOT in court as well. Cedar Rapids officials have not yet decided whether to file a lawsuit. After the jump I’ve enclosed excerpts from Kathy Bolten’s report for the Des Moines Register and Rick Smith’s for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Local governments are generally responsible for enforcing traffic laws. I’ll be interested to see whether Iowa courts back up the DOT’s efforts to restrict those powers on or near major highways. According to Trombino, the Iowa Code allows the DOT to enforce limits on cameras for traffic enforcement. Whatever the courts decide, the state’s multi-pronged assault on local control remains an under-reported story of Governor Terry Branstad’s fifth and sixth terms.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Marriage equality has been all over the news, with the sixth anniversary of legal same-sex marriage in Iowa arriving the same week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments related to state bans on marriage for LGBT couples. The Des Moines Register published charts showing Iowa poll findings on same-sex marriage going back to 1996. In that year, the Iowa House and Senate approved the Defense of Marriage Act, which the state Supreme Court struck down in the 2009 Varnum v Brien decision. Then State Representative Ed Fallon was the only Iowa lawmaker to vote against the DOMA; click here to read his passionate floor speech against the bill. I’ve posted excerpts after the jump.

The Washington Post compiled five charts showing “gay marriage’s road to popularity.” The most fascinating data point to me was that 34 percent of Republican respondents in an April 2015 nationwide Washington Post/ABC News poll now support marriage equality. Another chart shows that “Same-sex marriage attitudes also continue to be divided along religious lines.” That data set did not include Jews, however, who overwhelmingly support marriage equality.

Today’s Sunday Des Moines Register includes two good features by Mike Kilen following up on the six couples who were plaintiffs in the Varnum case. In a separate piece, Bob Vander Plaats and State Senator Dennis Guth told Kilen why they still believe it was a mistake to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger believes the decline in Republican voter registrations in his state is linked to “divisive battle over Proposition 8,” a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. California voters approved Prop 8 by ballot initiative in 2008, but it ceased to be in effect in June 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Prop 8 supporters did not have standing to appeal a lower-court ruling striking down the marriage ban.

Final note: Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines approved a request by a group of students to form a non-religious LGBT support club. The school recently made national news by withdrawing a contract offer made to an openly gay teacher. The new gay-straight alliance, “One Human Family,” will help provide “support, respect, and guidance” for students who either identify as LGBT or have questions about their sexual orientation.  

The U.S. Supreme Court heard two and a half hours of oral arguments this morning in several cases related to same-sex marriage rights, collectively called Obergefell v. Hodges. This thread is for any relevant comments or speculation.

April 27 marked six years since LGBT couples were able to obtain marriage licenses in Iowa under our state Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling. Bleeding Heartland recently compiled some links related to the marriage equality battle in Iowa.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Iowa’s own Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) grabbed national attention this week by introducing a bill to “prevent federal courts from hearing marriage cases,” thereby stopping the U.S. Supreme Court from “destroying traditional marriage.” After the jump I’ve posted King’s official statement about the “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act” as well as the full text.

President Barack Obama would surely veto this bill, even if it quickly passed the U.S. House (unlikely) and Senate (less likely). So King’s effort looks like a publicity stunt to bolster his image as one of the leading culture warriors on the right.

Out of curiosity, I asked Drake Law School Professor Mark Kende, an expert on constitutional law, whether it would theoretically be possible for Congress to limit the Supreme Court’s authority to consider any case on marriage. According to Kende, the U.S. Constitution allows Congress to “make exceptions to the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction.” Most Congressional efforts along these lines have failed to become law. However, a 19th-century precedent exists; in that case, Congress blocked the Supreme Court from ruling on an appeal in which justices had already heard oral arguments.

Whether King’s proposal would be constitutional is a more complicated question, Kende said. The Reconstruction-era law blocked a specific kind of appeal based on habeas corpus but did not bar the Supreme Court from ruling on all cases in that area of the law. The Constitution allows some leeway for “jurisdiction stripping” as a Congressional check on the judiciary, but that doesn’t necessarily mean citizens could be prevented from taking any case about their fundamental marriage rights to the Supreme Court.

In an alternate universe where Congress passed and the president signed King’s bill, the twelve federal appellate court rulings would be binding in their regions. Most federal court rulings on same-sex marriage bans have supported the principle of marriage equality. Only a divided 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld states’ ability to limit marriage rights to opposite-sex couples.