Gov. Kim Reynolds’ use of executive privilege to withhold documents from the public and the media led to two lawsuits being filed in Polk County District Court on Friday. In one, Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers (IAF) is suing the governor’s office over its withholding documents related to the decision to prevent the Iowa Satanic Temple from holding an event in the rotunda of the State Capitol during the 2024 holiday season. IAF, a social and educational nonprofit representing non-religious Iowans, is represented in its lawsuit by the ACLU of Iowa.
In the other lawsuit, Gov. Reynolds is suing the Des Moines Register, asking the court to let her office withhold documents related to Reynolds’ Feb. 5 appearance before the U.S. House Oversight Committee. During her testimony, the governor was asked about a baseless conspiracy theory promoted by Elon Musk that claimed Lutheran Family Services was involved in money laundering. The governor gave a noncommittal answer that immediately became a political embarrassment for her. The governor wants the court to exempt certain staff emails from the Register. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is representing Reynolds in the lawsuit.
Both IAF and the Register filed Open Records Act requests for the documents they seek. In both cases, the governor’s office turned over some of the requested documents, but withheld others claiming “executive privilege.”
According to a statement about the lawsuit against the Register issued by Reynolds’ office on Friday, the governor is suing “to protect the use of executive privilege for all Iowa governors past, present, and future.”
“It is in the public’s interest that governors can receive candid advice from their closest advisors,” Deputy Communications Director Mason Mauro said in the statement.
The governor is seeking to withhold four emails sent by senior members of her staff. None of the emails were sent to the governor, and she was not cc’ed on any of them, according to an email log provided to the Register as part of its Open Records Request. The subject line on all four emails is “Media Prep Doc.”
Gov. Reynolds appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 5, as part of an effort by House Republicans to defend and promote the work of Musk’s DOGE. Reynolds spoke about her own reorganization of Iowa’s government in 2023 and 2024, eliminating state agencies and public advisory boards, saying it could serve as a model for reform of the federal government.
During the hearing, Reynolds was asked by Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, if she agreed with the conspiracy theory circulating about Lutheran Family Services that had been by a member of Trump’s first administration and then boosted by Musk on X, formerly Twitter.
“I can tell you that in Iowa, the taxpayers of Iowa hold me personally responsible and accountable for state government, just as they hold President Trump accountable,” Reynolds replied, evading the question.
After being pressed to answer the question about Lutheran Family Services and the conspiracy theory, the governor said, “I can’t speak to that.”
The governor’s comments came 12 days after Lutheran Services in Iowa (LSI) had the federal funding that supports its work with refugee resettlement discontinued, as part of the Trump administration’s overall freeze on such funds.
The governor’s noncommittal reply, which left open the possibility the baseless conspiracy theory might be right, elicited an immediate response from people defending the integrity of Lutheran Family Services and LSI.
The next day, Iowa’s three Lutheran bishops released a letter pushing back against the conspiracy theory.
“The claims that these federal grants are illegal or that these federal grants are connected in any way to money laundering are complete lies,” the bishops said.” The falsehoods strike at the heart of our caring institutions and cast doubt on every Lutheran’s integrity.”
LSI President and CEO Renee Hardman rejected the phony allegations, pointing out that “Lutheran Services in Iowa has been around for 160 years performing services that are highly regulated through federal contracts.”
A week after her testimony, Reynolds finally said she “absolutely” did not believe the conspiracy theory was true. On March 11, the governor issued a proclamation declaring March 12 to be “Lutheran Services in Iowa Day.”
“For 160 years, LSI has been providing important services throughout our state, supporting families and communities in need,” the proclamation said.
By then, LSI had had to lay off a third of its workforce because of the federal funding freeze.
In a letter responding to Reynolds’ refusal to provide copies of the four staff emails with the subject line “Media Prep Doc,” the Register’s attorney pointed out to the governor’s office that the Opens Record Act does not have an executive privilege exemption.
“For the past 50 years, the Iowa Legislature has had ample opportunity to incorporate ‘executive privilege’ as a legitimate defense within the open-records law,” attorney Susan Elgin wrote. “The absence of such an amendment unmistakably indicates the Legislature’s intent to exclude this basis from the law.”
Elgin requested the governor’s office provide copies of the withheld email by April 25. Reynolds filed her lawsuit against the Register on the morning of April 25.
In the other Open Records Act lawsuit filed Friday, IAF is seeking documents withheld in response to its June request regarding the decision to prevent the Iowa Satanic Temple from staging a holiday event in the State Capitol rotunda as it had in previous years.
“Some relevant materials were turned over, but much was redacted,” the ACLU of Iowa said in a statement on Friday about the IAF lawsuit. “Also, the Governor’s Office provided hundreds of pages of news clippings that mentioned the controversy but which did not actually address the request.”
IAF President Jason Benell said, “Iowans deserve to know if the government is intentionally discriminating against them, and the current executive in Iowa has shown an unwillingness to respect these fundamental rights.”
“The specific documents withheld from the public eye in this case are an executive agency report from the Department of Administrative Services and multiple ‘media prep’ documents,” ACLU of Iowa staff attorney Thomas Story said regarding the lawsuit. “These are not the kind of sensitive matters of national security and foreign diplomacy that courts have protected from disclosure under executive privilege in the past. It may be embarrassing to the Governor’s Office to reveal its role in denying a religious group equal access to the state capitol building, but that does not give it the right to hide what it did and why it did it.”
This is not the first time the ACLU of Iowa has challenged a claim of executive privilege by Reynolds, the news release on Friday explained.
“The ACLU of Iowa successfully brought a lawsuit against her office because it was not responding to journalists’ requests for information about the state’s COVID response in a timely manner — or in some cases, at all. In 2023, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that her office is not above the law and must comply in a timely manner to public record requests from journalists from a variety of media outlets.”
The governor’s office settled that lawsuit by turning over all the requested documents, and after losing at the Iowa Supreme Court, the administration paid $175,000 to the plaintiffs in the various Open Records Act lawsuits in which it was claiming executive privilege.
