Category: Kim Reynolds

  • Iowa’s Republican-led government sparked outrage late last week by declining to participate in a federal program that would have provided low-income residents with $40 a month in additional food assistance during the coming summer. Created by the U.S. Congress late last year, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) for Children program aims to boost nutrition benefits for families with…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A district judge in Iowa has placed an indefinite hold on a recently passed statewide ban on abortion at six weeks, which had passed last week after a special session was convened by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. Polk County District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin issued his ruling on Monday, putting an injunction on the law while a lawsuit challenging it runs its course. “The current state of the law…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Less than one day after the Republican-controlled Iowa state legislature passed a six-week abortion ban, lawyers from Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Emma Goldman Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa filed a lawsuit on behalf of clinicians and reproductive health care specialists in the state to block the ban from being signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R).

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Iowa state legislature passed an anti-abortion bill late on Tuesday night, following a rushed consideration of the measure during a one-day special session that was convened by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. The bill, which bars abortions in the state after the six-week mark of pregnancy — a timeframe during which many people may not even realize they are pregnant — passed just after 11 p.m.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Iowa state Supreme Court has overruled a 2018 decision it previously made that deemed abortion rights protected under the state constitution.

    The reason for the reversal, which was announced on Friday, appears to only have happened because four justices, nominated by anti-abortion Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), were placed on the state’s highest bench over the past five years. Six of the seven justices overall were appointed by Republicans.

    The ruling does not make abortion illegal in Iowa, as federal standards and other laws in the state remain in place. But it does remove the previously held recognition from the court that abortion is a fundamental right under the state constitution.

    The ruling will likely allow for Republican lawmakers in Iowa to have the ability to place greater restrictions on the procedure in the near future, should the federal Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade later this summer.

    “We don’t know yet what [Republicans will] propose, but previously-blocked laws [by state courts] have included a 72-hour waiting period and a ‘fetal heartbeat’ bill,” Des Moines Register politics reporter Katie Akin observed.

    The 5-2 ruling examined a case involving a 24-hour waiting period to have an abortion, a law that Republicans passed in 2020. A lower court deemed that restriction unconstitutional. In reversing its 2018 ruling, the state Supreme Court sends the case back to the lower court to reconsider, based on the new precedent that says the state constitution doesn’t recognize and protect abortion rights.

    Justice Edward Mansfield, writing the opinion for the court, said he and his like-minded colleagues “[rejected] the proposition that there is a fundamental right to an abortion in Iowa’s Constitution subjecting abortion regulation to strict scrutiny.” However, Mansfield said that the court would not produce any new guidelines for the time being, noting that the federal Supreme Court was set to rule on the issue itself.

    Chief Justice Susan Christensen, who was also appointed by Gov. Reynolds, dissented from the ruling, stating that the majority overturned the court’s previous precedent at the first opportunity it had. The court was doing so too quickly, ignoring the standard of stare decisis — the idea of respecting previous precedents established by courts.

    “Out of respect for stare decisis, I cannot join the majority’s decision to overrule” the previous precedent, Christensen wrote in her opinion.

    The chief justice also recognized that the only reason for the reversal of the previous ruling was a change in its ideology. The ruling on Friday would make people question the legitimacy of the court, she added.

    “This rather sudden change in a significant portion of our court’s composition is exactly the sort of situation that challenges so many of the values that stare decisis promotes concerning stability in the law, judicial restraint, the public’s faith in the judiciary, and the legitimacy of judicial review,” Christensen said.

    “This is not to say that we may never overrule precedent that is clearly incorrect because we are worried about the public’s perception of our decision in relation to the change in our court’s makeup. … But we must only use this power when there is a ‘special justification’ over and above the belief ‘that the precedent was wrongly decided,’” Christensen wrote, quoting previous rulings that established how courts were meant to treat matters relating to stare decisis.

    Critics blasted the court’s decision to overturn a precedent and the manner in which it was done.

    “This decision was made possible by Gov. Kim Reynolds’ addition of Republican justices to the court — nothing more, nothing less,” wrote Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern.

    “Today’s ruling is a step backwards for Iowa,” Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Konfrst said. “Like a large majority of Iowans, I believe in reproductive freedom. I will continue to fight like hell to ensure every family has access to safe, legal abortion.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A little girl in a mask that matches her dress gives someone a thumbs up

    A federal judge has placed a temporary hold on an Iowa state law that restricted school districts from implementing masking rules to address the continued spread of coronavirus in the state.

    U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt sided with parents who had sued the state alleging their children with disabilities faced greater risks of contracting coronavirus due to an Iowa law, signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) in May, that limited school districts’ ability to require masks to be worn by students and staff at school. The parents argued that the new law violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, and that the limitations made it difficult for their children’s school districts to provide a safe learning environment.

    In his opinion on the case, Pratt recognized that his issuance of a temporary restraining order on the law was “an extreme remedy.”

    “However, if the drastic increase in the number of pediatric COVID-19 cases since the start of the school year in Iowa is any indication of what is to come, such an extreme remedy is necessary to ensure that the children involved in this case are not irreparably harmed,” Pratt added.

    A district rule on masking “is a reasonable modification that would enable disabled students to have equal access to the necessary in-person school programs, services, and activities,” the judge stated.

    Within hours of the ruling, some districts in Iowa began issuing new requirements on masking to start later this week. Des Moines Public Schools tweeted on Monday night that their masking requirements would begin on Wednesday, for example.

    Reynolds also announced that her administration would be appealing the ruling made by Pratt.

    “We will appeal and exercise every legal option we have to uphold state law and defend the rights and liberties afforded to any American citizen protected by our constitution,” Reynolds wrote on Twitter.

    Iowa’s hospitalization rate and its daily average of new coronavirus cases are both lower than rates being reported across the nation. However, the state is starting to see an uptick in new COVID cases. In the past two weeks, the daily infection rate has gone up by 27 percent, a rapid increase compared to the rest of the U.S., which has seen cases go up by just 8 percent during the same period of time.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.