Iowans voted to remove the three justices — David Baker, Michael Streit, and Marsha Ternus, the chief justice — through a regular process in the state that allows its citizens to decide whether or not appointed judges can retain their seats.
According to The Des Moines Register, this is the first time an Iowa Supreme Court justice has not been retained since 1962, when the state implemented the merit and retention system for judges.
NOM, which was co-founded by politics professor Robert George in 2007, contributed more than $600,000 to the Iowa for Freedom campaign’s effort to unseat the judges.
“Let the people of Iowa decide for themselves,” Brian Brown, president of NOM, said in a statement on the organization’s website. “Our opponents claim there is no such thing as an activist judge, but these judges have substituted their own values for the values of working families in Iowa.”
NOM joined forces with the Campaign for Working Families, a political action committee, and Iowa for Freedom as part of an “independent expenditure ad campaign,” according to the NOM website.
“I don’t think any single factor accounts for the success of the coalition,” George said in an e-mail.
George attributed the election’s results, in part, to high conservative voter turnout and “the cohesiveness of the coalition.” He also said he thought supporters of the three judges underestimated “the strength of opinion among Iowans who believe that marriage law should be made by the people acting through their legislative representatives, not by the judiciary.”
The Iowa Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling to uphold same-sex marriage as a constitutional right was unanimous and made Iowa the third state, after Massachusetts and Connecticut, to allow gay marriage. Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia have since followed suit.
In their ruling, the Iowa’s justices wrote that “plaintiffs are in committed and loving relationships, many raising families, just like heterosexual couples” and that “official recognition of their status provides an institutional basis for defining their fundamental relational rights and responsibilities, just as it does for heterosexual couples.”
As a 501(c)(4) organization, NOM is a tax-exempt nonprofit without limits on the amount of time or money that it can spend on political campaigning. The organization’s goal is to “protect marriage” by defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The headquarters of NOM are located at 20 Nassau St., and George is the chair of its board of directors.
In 2009, NOM started a $1.5 million ad campaign in several states to oppose same-sex marriage. It also contributed more than $2 million to fund Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the state.
NOM also donated more than $1.5 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, a group that rallied voters in 2009 to pass Proposition 1, which overturned legislation legalizing gay marriage that was passed earlier that year.
A Maine ethics committee investigating NOM’s fundraising tactics in that race has fought to have NOM disclose its donors and has rejected several appeals to drop the review.
NOM is now advocating a state constitutional amendment to overturn same-sex marriage in Iowa, a process that could take years.
Judicial scholars have voiced concern that judicial retention elections make justices too vulnerable to political campaigning and the popular will.
Members of the University community also expressed concern about NOM’s influence.
“The use of the buzzword ‘judicial activism’ creates a climate in which judges are more vulnerable to political campaigning,” Chloe Bordewich ’12 and Micah Joselow ’12, co-presidents of College Democrats, said in a joint e-mail.
“Judges exist to interpret the law, not to bend to every whim of the day,” they continued, adding that NOM’s argument that the judges substituted their own values for those of Iowans ignored a separate vote by the state’s voters not to hold a constitutional convention that could address gay marriage.
College Republicans president Tiernan Kane ’11 did not respond to a request for comment.
Iowa’s next vote for judicial retention comes in 2012, when Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins’ tenure will be on the line. It is unclear whether NOM will campaign to remove him.
George said that the next major issue for supporters and opponents of gay marriage is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a federal case that challenges Proposition 8 in California.
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