Judicial Retention vote following Gay Marriage ruling in 2011 2:25)

For those of you who have been around Iowa for a while, you may remember the incredibly forward looking decision made by the Iowa Supreme Court on April 3, 2009 that allowed same sex partners to marry. To remind you, the name of the case was Varnum v. Brien

There was reaction around the state from relief from many on the left to outright rage, predictions of hellfire and promises of revenge from the right. Iowa’s pope, Bob Vander Plaats, got right to work on that revenge. How dare some one live in his state in a way he disapproved of? How dare the state allow it to be legal.

And so the idea of using Iowa’s judicial retention vote to remove some of the offending judges – the judges who were by law up for a retention vote anyway – was employed. In the election, Justices David L. Baker, Michael Streit and Marsha Ternus were removed in retaliation for their votes in the Barnum case.  The decision in Barnum had been unanimous, but no other justices were removed in later retention votes.

So what does that have to do with the coming election? Well, judicial retention is still a part of Iowa elections. On the back of the ballot this year will be a chance to vote on the retention of Justice David May who was recently one of the 4 votes in a 4 – 3 decision to make Iowa’s abortion laws one of the most restrictive in the country. We now outlaw abortion after only 6 weeks, a time when many women are not even aware they are pregnant.

Retired Des Moines Register writer Rekha Basu brings up this interesting twist of history in an opinion piece in the Register a couple of weeks ago. 

As Basu points out in her piece:

Fast forward to this year, when a reconstituted Iowa Supreme Court, a majority hand-picked by Iowa’s anti-abortion Gov. Kim Reynolds, turns back the clock 50 years with a 4-3 ruling effectively outlawing abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy. In doing so, the justices overturned their own court’s precedent, deciding that abortion laws should not be assessed under the strict-scrutiny standard previously invoked.

And now, in response, some women are taking a cue from what Iowans for Freedom accomplished in 2010. They’re encouraging others to turn the page on the November ballot — literally — to the side where judicial retention votes are, and vote against Justice David May. He’s the only one who voted for the six-week ban who’s up this year.

*** skip ***

This time the ideological warfare has been waged by the governor, state lawmakers and the court’s new majority, by tampering with the once nonpartisan, constitutionally based process. Reynolds, an outspoken abortion opponent, called a special one-day session of the Legislature last summer to vote on the ban. Six weeks is before most women even know if they’re pregnant. Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature complied by passing it, though a nearly identical 2018 law had been permanently blocked. Reynolds had over the years appointed four new justices, including May, who could reliably be predicted to vote as they did.

The victims now will be untold numbers of pregnant women and girls, and children born to people ill-equipped to care for them.

Another way of looking at this is that while Iowans can’t vote the leader of this assault on women’s freedom out of office, you can vote one of the offenders of that freedom out. Also, don’t forget that you can vote any republican legislator out of office also. They were the henchmen who did Reynold’s bidding.

To be fair, the Register published an opposing opinion a week later. Here is the link. Read it and make up your own mind.  

As for me, firing the legislators who put this harmful law in place is most important. However the rules for judicial retention have been there for 60+ years. This is as good of a reason to fire a judge as I have seen.