Nate Willems served in the Iowa House from 2009 through 2012 and practices law with the Rush & Nicholson firm in Cedar Rapids. This essay previously appeared in the Prairie Progressive.

In August 2019, I filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of several current and former employees of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. We claimed UIHC was violating Iowa law by holding on to certain wage payments for too long before paying. As UIHC had a common payroll practice, we sought to certify a class action. Eventually, the U.S. District Court authorized the class action, and we took on representation of 11,000 current and former UIHC workers.

There was never any allegation UIHC entirely refused to pay workers. However, Iowa law requires a regular payday be within twelve days after the end of the period in which the wages were earned. For as long as anyone could remember, overtime, supplemental pay, pay for shifts that went long, and other types of premium pay were paid one month late. 

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

Last week, North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley denied a request from three counties in the state to investigate Summit Carbon Solutions’ investors. A new statute in North Dakota, which went into effect on August 1, tightens restrictions on foreign ownership of land in that state, among other measures.

But Summit Carbon Solutions, LLC as it exists today was formed in Delaware in 2021, according to the Iowa Secretary of State’s database of business entities. (That database shows the Summit Carbon Solutions, LLC created in Iowa in 2020 as “inactive.”) Wrigley explained in a recent letter to county commissioners that the effective date of the new legislation means “this office is unable to conduct a civil review of the company.”

Wrigley’s argument underscores one of the more disturbing aspects of the Summit Carbon matter, which is the false premise that state and local governments are powerless to regulate a Delaware LLC whose ownership structure remains largely a mystery, and whose own legal arguments identify the pipeline it proposes to build as a security threat.

Former U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose was sworn in yesterday as a federal judge. She is the youngest federal judge currently serving as well as the first woman on the bench in the Southern District of Iowa. The Senate confirmed Rose in September by 89 votes to 1.

In remarks prepared for Rose’s investiture, Senator Tom Harkin predicted her “legal skills and knowledge” and “great sense of justice and fairness” would make her a “superb judge.” He recommended Rose for U.S. attorney and later put her on the short list for the federal judgeship.

I was struck by Harkin’s comments about the retired Judge Robert Pratt, whom Rose replaces. I enclose those comments below, along with links on some of Pratt’s most influential decisions.

Last night the U.S. Senate confirmed Stephanie Rose to be a federal judge for the southern district of Iowa by a vote of 89 to 1. Iowa Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley both strongly supported Rose’s nomination. I’ve posted their floor statements after the jump.

Rose will be the first woman to serve as a federal judge in the southern district of Iowa. She was one of three women Harkin recommended for this vacancy last year. Harkin also recommended Rose for the position of U.S. attorney in Iowa’s northern district of Iowa, to which she was confirmed in November 2009.

Rose’s work on the Postville cases in 2008, when she was assistant U.S. attorney for the northern district of Iowa, sparked opposition to her appointment as U.S. attorney and as a federal judge. During her Senate confirmation hearing in March of this year, Rose disavowed any role in devising the legal tactics used against undocumented immigrants swept up in the Postville raids. The U.S. Supreme Court later invalidated the use of aggravated identity theft charges in cases similar to those of the Postville defendants. Harkin defended Rose’s involvement in the Postville cases.

U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose told members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that she wasn’t a key decision maker regarding the May 2008 immigration raid in Postville, Iowa.

Last month President Barack Obama nominated Stephanie Rose, U.S. attorney for Iowa’s northern district, for a federal judgeship in Iowa’s southern district. If confirmed, Rose would become the first woman to serve as a district judge in Iowa’s southern district. Today the Des Moines Register published an opinion piece urging U.S. senators not to “rubber-stamp” Rose’s nomination.  

The Iowa Court of Appeals held a ceremony yesterday to mark Chief Judge Rosemary Sackett’s retirement after 28 years of service. Meanwhile, Senator Tom Harkin cleared the way this week for the first woman to be named U.S. District Court judge for Iowa’s southern district.

Following up on my review of news from the first half of last year, I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from July through December 2009 after the jump.

Hot topics on this blog during the second half of the year included the governor’s race, the special election in Iowa House district 90, candidates announcing plans to run for the state legislature next year, the growing number of Republicans ready to challenge Representative Leonard Boswell, state budget constraints, and a scandal involving the tax credit for film-making.

I expected 2009 to be a relatively quiet year in Iowa politics, but was I ever wrong.

The governor’s race heated up, state revenues melted down, key bills lived and died during the legislative session, and the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Varnum v Brien became one of this state’s major events of the decade.

After the jump I’ve posted links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage of Iowa politics from January through June 2009. Any comments about the year that passed are welcome in this thread.

Although I wrote a lot of posts last year, there were many important stories I didn’t manage to cover. I recommend reading Iowa Independent’s compilation of “Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009,” as well as that blog’s review of “stories that will continue to impact Iowa in 2010.”

It took me a week longer than I anticipated, but I finally finished compiling links to Bleeding Heartland’s coverage from last year. This post and part 2, coming later today, include stories on national politics, mostly relating to Congress and Barack Obama’s administration. Diaries reviewing Iowa politics in 2009 will come soon.

One thing struck me while compiling this post: on all of the House bills I covered here during 2009, Democrats Leonard Boswell, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack voted the same way. That was a big change from 2007 and 2008, when Blue Dog Boswell voted with Republicans and against the majority of the Democratic caucus on many key bills.

No federal policy issue inspired more posts last year than health care reform. Rereading my earlier, guardedly hopeful pieces was depressing in light of the mess the health care reform bill has become. I was never optimistic about getting a strong public health insurance option through Congress, but I thought we had a chance to pass a very good bill. If I had anticipated the magnitude of the Democratic sellout on so many aspects of reform in addition to the public option, I wouldn’t have spent so many hours writing about this issue. I can’t say I wasn’t warned (and warned), though.

Links to stories from January through June 2009 are after the jump. Any thoughts about last year’s political events are welcome in this thread.

Yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Stephanie Rose and Nick Klinefeldt to be the U.S. Attorneys in Iowa’s northern and southern districts, respectively. Senator Tom Harkin recommended Rose and Klinefeldt for those positions in March, and President Barack Obama nominated them in September.

Some defense and immigration attorneys criticized Rose’s nomination because of her role in last year’s Postville prosecutions. Harkin and Senator Chuck Grassley defended Rose’s qualifications for the U.S. attorney position.

I still think the Senate Judiciary Committee should have thoroughly examined the treatment of Postville detainees before voting to confirm Rose. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in May that “federal prosecutors have inappropriately used aggravated identity theft laws to prosecute undocumented workers.” Most of the fast-track Postville prosecutions were identity-theft cases. I sincerely hope that under Rose’s leadership, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the northern district will treat alleged illegal immigrants more fairly in the future.

Main Justice posted a short bio of Klinefeldt here and a short bio of Rose here. Those pages include links to the nominees’ full Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaires (pdf files).

Iowans Nick Klinefeldt and Stephanie Rose were among three U.S. attorney nominees the Senate Judiciary Committee approved today by unanimous consent, the Main Justice blog reported. Their nominations still need to be confirmed by the full Senate, but that is likely to be a formality. In March, Senator Tom Harkin recommended Klinefeldt for the U.S. attorney position in Iowa’s southern district and Rose for the position in Iowa’s northern district. President Barack Obama nominated the two last month.

Main Justice posted a short bio of Klinefeldt here and a short bio of Rose here. Those pages include links to the nominees’ full Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaires (pdf files).

A Bleeding Heartland reader who watched today’s committee meeting tells me that Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy asked if there were any objections to the nominations, and none were raised. Senator Chuck Grassley told his colleagues that he “had interviewed both Iowa nominees –he praised Harkin’s selections and both nominees–he asked that a statement he prepared be made part of the record but did not read the statement.”

I expected the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Rose about her role in last year’s prosecutions of hundreds of undocumented workers from Postville. Harkin has defended her on the grounds that officials senior to Rose made the key policy decisions. Even so, Rose should have been asked about the cases and how they might have been handled differently. As things stand, I agree with critics who say promoting Rose without asking serious questions “would constitute a stamp of approval on the Postville debacle.”

Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language court interpreter, has spoken and written at length about injustice he observed in the aftermath of the Postville raid:

Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.

In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.

He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.

Click here to watch a video interview of Camayd-Freixas or download his 14-page essay about his experience with the Postville detainees. Rose may have the skills to be a good U.S. attorney, but it bothers me that the Senate Judiciary Committee has just indicated that they have no concerns or objections about last year’s events in Iowa. That’s a bad message to send to U.S. attorneys everywhere.

A full six months after Senator Tom Harkin recommended Stephanie Rose and Nick Klinefeldt for the U.S. attorney positions in Iowa’s northern and southern districts, President Barack Obama sent Rose’s and Klinefeldt’s names to the Senate for confirmation. Radio Iowa posted the September 25 press release from the White House.

I don’t know when the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up these nominations. Some advocates have objected to Rose’s nomination because of civil liberties and due process violations in the wake of last year’s immigration raid in Postville. Senators should thoroughly explore Rose’s role in the Postville prosecutions during her confirmation hearing. Harkin’s office has defended Rose’s record and her work with the detainees from Postville.

The nomination of Stephanie Rose to be the next United States Attorney in the Northern Distric of Iowa is an issue that needs sunshine.  We should all care what about happened at the Postville Prosecutions and that Assistant United States Attorney Stephanie Rose played  a central role in the prosecutions. We should all care because never in the history of the United States have there been federal prosecutions conducted like the ones that occurred stemming from the Postville ICE raid.  

We believe that before Stephanie Rose  is confirmed as a United States Attorney, the public has a right to know what kind of prosecutor she will be. A careful public review of her record is essential. It is critical that the public be able to determine what her views are regarding the Postville prosecutions as she has been quoted as calling Postville ” a ton of good work.”  

We deserve to know if  Rose ever raised her voice in opposition to the Northern District’s use of coercive prosecutorial tactics against the Postville workers?  Even Privately?

To date no one has been held accountable for the due process and civil liberties violations of that occurred in Postville prosecutions No one is asserting that Stephanie Rose should be held solely accountable for the Postville prosecutions. However, there is no doubt that the Postville prosecutions were the most important cases to occur in the Northern District of Iowa since Ms Rose has been employed in the office.  The fact that the cases occurred while she was in a leadership position and “played a central role in the raid and prosecution” is an important part of her record that requires careful examination.  

Even if it is true that Stephanie Rose played no direct policy role in the Postville prosecutions, she was still acting according to her oath as an officer of the court and as a federal prosecutor. Ethically and morally, her hands were not tied once she was given her  Postville prosecution assignment to negotiate the “exploding” seven-day plea agreements with attorneys representing the workers.  Even if the “raid was initiated by Washington,” or  the prosecution designed by other prosecutors in her own office,  as Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney, Ms Rose still had made ethical duties. It was her responsibility to carefully review and scrutinize each prosecution for any ethical or constitutional due process problems. The ethical and constitutional issues created by the prosecutions were numerous and should have been obvious to her. Either Ms. Rose was not able to understand the numerous defects in the prosecutions,  she chose to overlook the defects  or she just plain failed to see any problems with the prosecutions as executed. Any one of these conclusions raises serious questions about her judgment and fitness to be an United States Attorney at this point in her career.  

It really concerns us that no serious  reporting has covered Stephanie  Rose’s   professional record and in particular her role in the Postville prosecutions.   Senator Harkin touts her as leader but  completely fails to hold her accountable for any thing bad that has happened in the  Northern District office during her tenure.  Once Harkin nominated Rose, he decided he would support her and does not want to lose face.

The Postville Prosecutions are arguably the most egregious use of federal prosecutorial power this century. At the time of the Postville Prosecutions, Rose was not a low ranking member of the office but was in a leadership position as third in charge in the office for criminal prosecutions behind only United States Attorney Dummermuth and Chief Deputy Richard Murphy. Recently,   Stephanie Rose was asked about her role at Postville. She defended the raid and prosecutions saying “executing the massive operation required amazing effort and a ton of good work.”  (See Waterloo Courier article from   April 5, 2009 .)

The plea agreements negotiated by Stephanie Rose were calculated to take advantage of the workers worry about families they had been supporting with their wages. Almost all workers were represented by lawyers with little or no immigration expertise that were forced to represent on average 17 workers during a very short period of time. Clearly this was premeditated and calculated to force the workers to waive all rights and submit to the criminal charges and then deportation after serving five months in prison.  Stephanie Rose is apparently blind to the fact that the Postville workers were begging to be released to go support their families in Guatemala .   Her “ton of good work” really amounted to ramming these cases through before anyone could raise an effective defense.  Her record at best, even without the Postville Prosecutions,  was mediocre, her role in the prosecutions is more than troubling but her unqualified support for the Postville Prosecutions and  ICE raid  tactics even with the benefit of hindsight makes her nomination a complete disgrace.

It seems more than implausible that Stephanie Rose while operating in the position of Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division had no clue that the Postville prosecutions were being planned by her colleagues in the Iowa office until just before the ICE raid.  It also seems implausible that she would have no prior knowledge of the ICE Postville investigation nor that criminal complaints and criminal arrest warrants for 697 Postville workers that were being prepared and sought by her office some 30 days before the ICE raid. Either Rose was involved in the Postville prosecutions to a greater extent than she has being willing to acknowledge or she was displaying that leadership trick of “putting her head in the sand.” Neither of these conclusions is what we would expect of a United States Attorney candidate.

Even more importantly is what she did after she found out about the prosecution plan-did she ever raise any concerns? When? With whom? Why a year later is she quoted as calling the Postville ICE raid and Prosecutions “a ton of good work?”

Even if it is true that Stephanie Rose played no direct policy role in the Postville prosecutions, she was still acting according to her oath as an officer of the court and as a federal prosecutor. Ethically and morally, her hands were not tied once she was given her Postville prosecution assignment to negotiate the “exploding” seven-day plea agreements with attorneys representing the workers.  Even if the “raid was initiated by Washington,” or  other  prosecution designed by other prosecutors in her own office,  as Chief Deputy of the Criminal Division and as an Assistant United States Attorney,  Rose still had ethical duties. It was her responsibility to carefully review and scrutinize each prosecution for any ethical or constitutional due process problems once she became involved as an officer of the court.

The ethical and constitutional issues created by the Postville prosecutions were numerous and should have been obvious to her. Stephanie Rose was not able to understand the numerous defects in the prosecutions, she chose to overlook the defects or she just plain failed to see any problems with the prosecutions as executed. Any one of these conclusions raises serious questions about her judgment and fitness to be a United States Attorney at this point in her career.  

Why not clear up the issue of Stephanie Rose’s role and release all emails and memos that describe her role?  Likewise, she should volunteer to answer questions under oath about her Postville role and her views on basic criminal justice issues. AG Holder certainly made his records and emails  available to the public during his vetting. Why is Harkin keeping us in the dark?

Rose has refused to meet with the leaders  of Postville to talk about the case-what is she hiding?

Minimally,  she helped railroad the least powerful people in Iowa and now that they are gone no one but a few in the clergy seem to care how outrageous they were treated. This is being swept under the rug -which is what Harkin and Rose want to happen.  Please help shine sunlight on this issue.

Iowa deserves better! There must be better attorneys in Iowa other than an attorney without a cloud over her head…

One year after federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants, prayer vigils are planned in Postville and in at least 50 other cities across the country:

“Postville will one day be remembered as a dark chapter in U.S. history that served as a catalyst for reforming our nation’s immigration system into something we can take pride in again,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan, pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

[…]

Ever since the raid, pro-immigration groups, including the Catholic church and other religious and political lobbies, have used it to illustrate what they argue is the basic unfairness of punishing illegal immigrants seeking a better life.

To make their point, today they are staging a prayer vigil, news conferences, a blessing for the town and a symbolic march to the Agriprocessors plant.

“We are working hard to raise the national consciousness about the devastation of this raid,” said Sister Mary McCauley. “We are calling for complete immigration reform and an end to the raids. … We can never be proud of what happened here.”

I’M for Iowa sent out an e-mail yesterday about the vigils:

People are asked to gather at St. Bridget’s Church at 4:00 p.m. for a prayer vigil followed by a march to the Agriprocessors plant where the raid took place. Text for the prayer vigil is available for adaptation for local use.

If you aren’t able to travel to Postville, there may be a vigil in your home town, since May 12th has been declared a nationwide day of remembrance to promote awareness of the devastating effects of raids such as this. In Des Moines, Catholic Charities’ Social Justice Consortium will hold an interfaith prayer service at 3:30 at St. Ambrose Church. Contact Sol Varisco at svarisco@dmdiocese.org.

More links are after the jump.

Lynda Waddington posted an interesting story at Iowa Independent about a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling announced yesterday. The decision may become an issue at confirmation hearings if President Barack Obama takes Senator Tom Harkin’s advice and nominates Stephanie Rose for U.S. attorney in Iowa’s Northern District.

More on this story is after the jump.

Senator Tom Harkin nominated two very different candidates for the U.S. attorney positions in Iowa. His nominee for the Northern District of Iowa is Stephanie Rose, who has worked in the office she will run for more than a decade. Harkin’s office noted that Rose

“has served as lead counsel in more than 260 criminal felony cases and as associate counsel on over 50 federal cases.  She also has argued before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals 34 times. During her tenure as a federal prosecutor she has earned a national reputation within the Department of Justice as one of the nation’s leading prosecutors of illegal Internet pharmacy cases.”

Rose will also be the first woman U.S. attorney in Iowa since Roxanne Conlin served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District from 1977 to 1981. Lynda Waddington has more about Rose at Iowa Independent.

Harkin’s choice for the Southern District is Nick Klinefeldt, who has some background in criminal law but no experience as a federal prosecutor. The Des Moines Register quoted Harkin as saying, “I can tell you right now, the political considerations were not the deciding factor, considering some of the people who did not get it.” (Many well-connected people sought the nomination for the Southern District, including former Iowa Public Safety Commissioner Kevin Techau, former Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Gordon Fischer and Gov. Chet Culver’s director of drug control policy, Gary Kendall, as well as Iowa Assistant Attorney General Donn Stanley and Tom Henderson, chairman of the Polk County Democrats.)

That said, Klinefeldt has a much more “political” resume than Rose. He is both a former Harkin staffer and a former clerk of a judge who is close to Harkin. He has also represented the Iowa Democratic Party and various Democratic candidates. Which is not to say Klinefeldt won’t do an excellent job as U.S. attorney. I doubt he’ll let partisan concerns influence his office, which would be an improvement on the George W. Bush appointee who prosecuted a Democratic state senator in Iowa on very thin evidence.

The White House has not decided yet how it will handle the U.S. attorney appointments, according to the Washington Post. It’s possible that President Obama will leave some Bush appointees in place. However, the president usually goes along with the recommendations of a U.S. senator from the president’s party on these matters. President Bush’s Iowa appointees were recommended by Senator Chuck Grassley, for instance. I would be very surprised if Obama did not nominate both Rose and Klinefeldt.