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

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

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

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

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

FEEDBACK FROM IOWA ATTORNEYS

There’s no “objective” way to determine how well a judge is doing the job. If you know and trust any attorneys in your area, it can be helpful to ask privately whether they are aware of serious concerns regarding anyone up for retention. That’s not a systematic way of learning how the legal community views any particular judge, though. Not every lawyer has experience with all the local judges, and reasonable minds can differ about their work.

The Iowa State Bar Association’s Judicial Performance Reviews are the most comprehensive and accessible resource for learning about judges on the ballot. You can find reviews dating back to 1996 here. This year, the association sent the form to 5,614 active members across the state, of whom 1,045 completed the survey. The bar published the results on October 9.

In order to evaluate any judge up for retention, participating attorneys must have some contact or first-hand experience with them, or have practiced before them in trial court, or have read their opinions (for appellate judges). That’s why the number of respondents for each judge is different, from a few dozen for District Court judges in rural areas to 278 attorneys who filled out the form regarding Justice May.

The results average ratings from 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent) on six questions related to professional competence:

• knowledge and application of the law
• perception of factual issues
• attentiveness to arguments and testimony
• temperament and demeanor
• clarity and quality of written opinions
• promptness of rulings and decisions

Another set of questions relates to demeanor. Again, a 1 is the lowest rating, and 5 is the best a judge can receive.

• avoids undue personal observations or criticisms of litigants, judges, and lawyers from the bench or in written orders
• decides cases on the basis of applicable law and fact, not affected by outside influence
• is courteous and patient with litigants, lawyers, and court personnel
• treats people equally regardless of race, gender, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, or disability and demonstrates an awareness of the influence of implicit bias
• deals with pro se litigants (those representing themselves) and pro se litigation fairly and effectively

Finally, attorneys mark whether they think each judge should be retained.

Here’s the full 2024 Judicial Performance Review. The first section includes short biographies for each judge on the ballot: when they were appointed, where they went to college and law school, and where they worked before joining the bench. The survey results begin on page 24, starting with Justice May, then the Appeals Court judges, then the lower court judges in numerical order by judicial district.

Every Iowa voter can mark their ballot “yes” or “no” on Justice May and the Appeals Court judges. Your county of residence will determine which District Court judges appear on the back side of the ballot. This map from the Iowa Judicial Branch website shows the judicial district boundaries.

ONE APPEALS COURT JUDGE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS

For decades, most Iowa judges have received high ratings on the Judicial Performance Reviews. It’s typical for more than 90 percent of attorneys to say any given judge should be retained, and rare for that percentage to fall below 80 percent.

Four Iowa Court of Appeals judges are on the 2024 ballot: Tyler Buller (a Reynolds appointee from 2022), Mary Chicchelly (a Reynolds appointee from 2021), Samuel Langholz (a Reynolds appointee from 2023), and Mary Tabor (appointed by Governor Chet Culver in 2010). Their short biographies are on pages 6 and 7 of the review.

The scores reveal that one of these judges is not like the others.

Tabor and Chicchelly received the highest ratings in this group, around 94 percent. Tabor averaged at least 4.5 (between “good” and “excellent”) on every metric.

Buller’s retention percentage was just under 84 percent, below what is typical for an Iowa appeals court judge. His lowest scores related to temperament and demeanor, and courtesy and patience.

In contrast, just 64 percent of 186 attorneys surveyed would recommend retaining Langholz. While “two out of three ain’t bad” in some contexts, it’s quite low for an Iowa judge.

My review of every bar association survey since 1996 found that only one other Iowa Court of Appeals judge ever received a retention rating below 80 percent. Attorneys gave Rosemary Shaw Sackett retention ratings of 72.7 percent in 1996, 79.1 percent in 2002, and 77.6 percent in 2008.

Langholz averaged below 4 out of 5 on every metric. Perhaps some defense attorneys gave him low marks due to his work as State Public Defender before joining the governor’s office. But I suspect broader concerns are at play.

His lowest score (an average of 3.2, or satisfactory) was for “decides cases on the basis of applicable law and fact, not affected by outside influence.” That may reflect perceptions about his previous work as senior legal counsel for Governor Kim Reynolds, and later chief deputy attorney general under Attorney General Brenna Bird, or his earlier role as founding president of the Iowa Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society​.

Also relevant: while on Reynolds’ staff, Langholz tried to persuade Republican lawmakers to upend the judicial selection system in 2019. The initial proposal would have removed all elected attorneys from the state and district judicial nominating commissions, giving political appointees total control of the process. The compromise eventually enacted removed an Iowa Supreme Court justice from the State Judicial Nominating Commission and gave the governor power to appoint a majority of its members (nine out of seventeen).

Republicans tinkered with the judicial selection process again after commission members declined to put Langholz on the short lists for multiple Iowa Supreme Court and Iowa Court of Appeals vacancies. Reynolds signed a GOP bill in 2022 that required the state commission to submit five nominees—not three—for the Court of Appeals. (The legislature couldn’t expand the number of finalists for each Iowa Supreme Court vacancy without amending Article V, Section 15 of the state constitution, a multi-year process.)

That change had the intended effect last year, when Langholz was among the five finalists for an appeals court vacancy.

During his public interview with the State Judicial Nominating Commission in July 2023, Langholz promised to be “fair and impartial” and “steadfastly committed to the rule of law” if appointed to the bench. He said he appreciated the separation of powers, and believed “the independence of the judiciary is absolutely critical.” He assured commissioners he understood taking a judicial oath is a “serious thing,” and “you’re moving into a new role. What you’ve done in the past is not part of how you approach judging.”

Be that as it may, I will vote no on Langholz, not because of his judicial philosophy—I’ve voted to retain many conservative judges—but because of what I directly experienced during his time as Reynolds’ senior legal counsel.

Staff in the governor’s office consistently prevented me from attending Reynolds’ press conferences in 2019 and 2020, including the many virtual conferences held during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pretext was that I was not credentialed in the Iowa House or Senate—a policy that didn’t exist in writing. Approximately 100 other journalists who didn’t report from the legislature were allowed to cover Reynolds’ public events around the state in 2019 or 2020, and several of them were allowed to call into her COVID press conferences.

The Washington-based Institute for Free Speech commissioned a legal memo about my credentialing problems in 2019. It concluded that the policies of the Iowa House and Senate and governor’s office “suffer from serious constitutional deficiencies to the extent they deny credentials to Ms. Belin based on her status as a blogger, and further to the extent that the Legislature arbitrarily applies the policy.”

In an effort to resolve the matter quietly, the institute did not publicize the legal memo. Its President David Keating sent the document to legislative leaders, Reynolds, and senior staff in the governor’s office. Keating wrote to Langholz in May 2019, “We would be pleased to assist you and Gov. Reynolds to revise the policy to ensure its compliance with both the letter and spirit of the Constitution as well as to address legitimate concerns about having a manageable policy.”

I don’t know what internal discussions occurred, but I later confirmed that neither Langholz nor anyone else on Reynolds’ staff replied to correspondence from the Institute for Free Speech in 2019. The governor’s top lawyer didn’t even acknowledge receipt of a memo warning of “serious constitutional deficiencies” in an office policy.

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Reynolds’ staff stopped responding to public records requests. Langholz was aware of the problem, because I copied him on some of my emails following up on my unanswered requests. He had moved to a senior position in the Attorney General’s office before a group of plaintiffs including myself sued the governor’s office for violating Iowa’s open records law. (The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that we could proceed with our claims, after which the state settled and agreed to pay our attorneys’ fees.)

To sum up, it was Langholz’s job as senior legal counsel to make sure the governor’s office complied with the law and the constitution. They fell short on both fronts, in ways that impeded my press freedom and my newsgathering for years. Although Langholz promised to act without fear or favor in his new role, I share the concerns of attorneys who lack confidence he will decide cases “on the basis of applicable law and fact, not affected by outside influence.”

THREE DISTRICT COURT JUDGES RECEIVE LOW RATINGS

Most of the 64 district or district associate judges on Iowa’s 2024 ballot received retention ratings of at least 90 percent, and almost all of them had the endorsement of at least 80 percent of attorneys who filled out the bar association survey. You can scroll through the performance review for details on each judge’s scores.

Highest-rated judges

The following judges received particularly high overall marks (retention ratings above 95 percent) from attorneys who are familiar with their practice.

• District 1A: Thomas Bitter (98.3 percent), Robert James Richter (97.3 percent)
• District 1B: Brook Jacobsen (96.3 percent)
• District 2A: Elizabeth Batey (100 percent)
• District 2B: Paul Crawford (96.9 percent), Hans Becker (96.6 percent), Derek Johnson (95.3 percent)
• District 3B: Robert Tiefenthaler (100 percent), Jessica Noll (95.8 percent)
• District 4: Eric John Nelson (96.4 percent)
• District 5A: Terry Rickers (96.6 percent)
• District 6: Andrew Chappell (95.5 percent), Elizabeth Dupuich (95.2 percent)
• District 8A: Patrick McAvan (100 percent), Myron Gookin (96.7 percent)
• District 8B: Shane Wiley (100 percent), Clinton Boddicker (95.5 percent)

One finding from the judicial performance review surprised me, even though it was well within the normal range. In District 2B, 55 of the 62 attorneys who rated Judge Kurt Stoebe recommended keeping him on the bench, giving him an 89 percent retention rating.

Why was that surprising? Stoebe made statewide news three years ago when the governor called out his allegedly “unprofessional” conduct and “misleading comments” during the judicial selection process. In a letter to district judicial nominating commission members, Reynolds explained that she declined to appoint either of two finalists for a District Court judgeship, because Stoebe “tainted this selection process to such an extent that the Commission did not carefully consider each individual that applied for this position.”

Following that debacle, the District 2B commission stopped following statutory and constitutional provisions that call for the longest-serving judge of a district (in this case Stoebe) to chair such bodies. Every other district judicial nominating commission is led by a senior judge. In November 2023, an error in the selection process prompted Reynolds to take the “extraordinary step” of refusing to act on a another slate of District Court nominees forwarded from District 2B.

Lowest-rated judges

Three judges received unusually low ratings on the performance review. In District 1A, only 52.2 percent of attorneys who filled out the survey supported retaining District Court Judge Monica Ackley of Dubuque. Appointed by Governor Tom Vilsack in 2003, Ackley failed to average 4 out of 5 (a “good” rating) on any metric. Her lowest marks were for perception of factual issues, knowledge and application of the law, quality of written opinions, undue personal observations or criticism of participants in legal proceedings, and deciding cases on the basis of law and fact, “not affected by outside influence.” She also received relatively low marks and a retention rating of 54 percent in the performance review from 2018, the last time she was on the ballot (her surname at that time was Wittig).

In District 8B, District Court Judge John M. Wright had a retention rating of 65.5 percent. Appointed by Governor Chet Culver in 2010, his scores averaged 4 or higher on several metrics. His lowest marks were for temperament and demeanor, being courteous and patient with litigants, lawyers, and court personnel, and making “undue personal observations or criticisms of litigants, judges and lawyers from bench or in written opinions.”

The lowest-rated judge on Iowa’s 2024 ballot is District Associate Judge Rachael Seymour (District 5C, Polk County). Her overall retention rating was 46.8 percent, the lowest I can recall seeing on one of these performance reviews. Appointed by Culver in 2010, Seymour averaged below 4 out of 5 on every metric. Her composite score was between 2 (“deficient”) and 3 (“satisfactory”) in four areas: 2.5 on temperament and demeanor, 2.5 on being courteous and patient; 2.7 on making undue personal observations or criticisms, and 2.8 for promptness of rulings and decisions.

While researching this post, I learned the Iowa Supreme Court reversed Seymour this year in K.C. v. Polk County District Court. That case arose after the district associate judge, presiding over juvenile court, denied defendant K.C.’s motion for additional expert witness fees to compensate a board-certified forensic psychologist.

It was a weird case in several ways. Attorneys for both the juvenile defendant and the state agreed that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to reconsider the expert fee, refusing to explain its reasoning for lowering the fee, and “relying on facts not supported by the record.” Both sides agreed the Iowa Supreme Court should correct the lower court’s action. They were mainly arguing over whether the justices should merely reverse the order on expert fees, or go further and decide K.C.’s constitutional claims relating to due process and equal protection. (The state prevailed on that point, as a unanimous court declined to address the constitutional arguments.)

Another unusual aspect of the case: the video from the oral arguments is unlisted, unlike most Iowa Supreme Court hearings, which can easily be found on the Iowa Courts YouTube channel.

The arguments contained a remarkable exchange between Chief Justice Susan Christensen and the state’s attorney, Zachary Miller. I cued up this clip to start there:

The chief justice, who had extensive juvenile law experience before her appointment to the Supreme Court, noted the “odd” nature of the case, with both sides agreeing on how the lower court abused its discretion. She said the words “arbitrary” and “capricious” came to her mind.

Chief Justice Christensen added that after looking at an order Judge Seymour had filed, “Correct me if I’m wrong, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it kind of seems like there was an intentional delay tactic by the court that really put the kid in a Catch-22. I mean, she seemed actually to have been annoyed by anybody even tapping her on the shoulder and asking” about the reimbursements. As they considered how to resolve the case, the chief justice wondered, “What message can we send to the bar, and the bench?”

Miller explained where the state’s position differed from the juvenile defendant’s, and argued that the court should remand and instruct the District Court to reconsider the fee request, using their discretion and appropriate factors.

The chief justice followed up with more striking questions and observations:

What message are we sending on the practice of law, when you have a judge who’s saying, you know, I previously held a hearing, and then puts in italics, “at your request we moved the hearing date.” “Defense counsel subsequently contacted judicial system on two separate occasions.” “Defense counsel has now filed another motion.” It sounds like an order that’s saying, there’s been some whining going on.

What message can be sent in this opinion? What is the protocol? What’s a lawyer supposed to do? It is hard for a lawyer to say to a judge, “Excuse me, would you please rule?” For fear of the judge saying, “Ah, you betcha, I’ll rule today—against you.”

There’s that fear. So I kind of think that the motion was quite brave, and what are we to say about that to judges?

Miller noted that this kind of delay can leave an expert witness in a “tough spot,” and suggested the Iowa Supreme Court might encourage judges to rule on these fee motions “expeditiously,” and could provide “useful guidance” on that front.

The chief justice observed that in this case, “the child made every effort they could to obtain a timely decision.” She wondered whether there might be some way to describe a “super-abuse of discretion.” She expressed concern “about the message that we’re sending” if the high court simply remanded the case without talking about the details.

Later in the hearing, Chief Justice Christensen pointed out that the juvenile court’s order had relied on an Iowa Supreme Court precedent known as Hulse: “I don’t believe she even analyzed it, she just dropped a citation to Hulse.” She also said, “There’s abuse of discretion, and there’s super-abuse of discretion.” And again, the chief justice alluded to comments in the judge’s orders that raised “concerns about tone” and “the way things were handled.”

I’ve never seen anything like that in an Iowa Supreme Court oral argument. It persuaded me to vote against keeping Seymour on the bench.