Sierra Club Opposes Bill to Politicize Judges in County Courthouses

UPDATE -- this bill is inactive for 2023.  It failed to pass through the funnel, where bills are winnowed if they have not moved through several steps of the legislative process.

A bill recently passed the Iowa Senate, SF171, that would change the composition of the members of the judicial nominating commissions for district court judges. These are the judges who rule over cases in the county courthouses.

As the law currently stands, the judicial nominating commission for each judicial district in the state is composed of five members appointed by the governor, five members elected by the lawyers in each judicial district, and the longest serving judge in each district.

These commissioners interview attorneys who apply to be district court judges. Then the commission nominates two candidates whose names are sent to the governor. The governor then appoints one of those nominees to be a judge.

This process has worked well for over 50 years. It is designed to take politics out of the process of selecting judges. It is hoped that the judges will therefore be fair and impartial. In some states candidates for judgeships run for election and are forced to be politicians. In some states judges are appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the legislature, just like federal judges. As we have seen on the federal level, that kind of judicial selection causes politics to rear its ugly head.

However, the Republican majority in the Iowa Legislature is not satisfied with the existing process. SF171 would give the governor 6 appointments to each commission and the lawyers would have only 5. And the longest serving judge would no longer be a member of the commission. Therefore, the governor’s appointees would be a majority of the commission. The outcome would be that the governor would control indirectly who is nominated for a judgeship and directly control who is appointed from those partisan nominees.

Furthermore, having a judge on the selection committee is valuable, in that the judge knows and understands the day-to-day work of a judge.  That can be important information in selecting judge candidates.

Sierra Club is opposed to SF171. We want judges who will judge our environmental cases fairly, with no taint of political partisanship.

This has already passed the Senate and is now being considered by the Iowa House.

Tell your state representative to oppose SF171.

To look up your house member, see www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/house

To find your legislator, see www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find