Court rejects governor’s move to dismiss public records suit

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against Gov. Kim Reynolds that seeks to require her office to respond to public record requests. The court in a unanimous decision rejected Reynolds’ argument that her office wasn’t obligated to respond in a timely matter to record requests and that she could avoid the state’s open records law by simply ignoring the requests. The Supreme Court ordered that the case be returned to the district court where it would be decided on its merits. “The governor’s office wanted a rule that it and its agencies can ignore public records requests without any consequences,” said Thomas Story, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, which represented three media organizations. “Instead, the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that nobody is above the law.” In a statement, Reynolds blamed any delays on a busy staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic and said her office now is responding to records requests. “While we disagree that this lawsuit should continue, my office has eliminated the backlog of open records requests and is committed to upholding our responsibility to respond to any new requests in a timely manner,” Reynolds said in a statement. The case stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by the three media organizations and their reporters who claimed the governor had violated Iowa’s open records law by ignoring requests for government records. The reporters had emailed the governor’s office with eight different open-record requests between April 2020 and April 2021 and renewed each request at least once but didn’t receive any response until filing a lawsuit in December 2021.