Don’t bend your principles to get a desired outcome

Here we go again.

Don’t be surprised if there is a hard-fought campaign between now and the November election over a guy named David May. You may not recognize his name. But you will in the weeks to come.

May is the newest member of the Iowa Supreme Court. His name will be on the ballot in November, with voters having the opportunity to weigh in on whether he should be retained as one of the seven justices on the court.

May is a native of Kirksville, Mo. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Oklahoma before earning his law degree from Drake University in 1998.

May was in private legal practice in Des Moines until 2016, when he was appointed a district court judge. Three years later, he was appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals. Two years ago, Gov. Kim Reynolds chose him to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court following Justice Brent Appel’s retirement.

But this is not why May likely will become a household name this autumn.

That will occur because he was among the four Supreme Court justices who decided in June to uphold Iowa’s so-called fetal heartbeat law, which was passed in 2023 during a special session of the Legislature. Supporters of pregnant women’s right to choose whether to have an abortion have been talking up the idea of using the November retention referendum on May to convey their disagreement with the Supreme Court’s decision.

My friend Rekha Basu, the retired Des Moines Register columnist, wrote recently about efforts by a group called Iowans for Reproductive Freedom. The organization has not taken an official position on Justice May, although it has purchased billboards around Des Moines bearing messages like “Keep Government Out of Women’s Health Care” and “If Men Got Pregnant, We Wouldn’t Be Discussing This.”

One of the group’s founders, Lea DeLong of Des Moines, wrote a letter that is circulating among like-minded people. In that letter, she writes, “It is an unfortunate development in our society that these kinds of actions against judges must happen, but I’m afraid we have had to learn some sad lessons from those who deny the rights of women.”

DeLong told Basu, “The ideological bias of this court does not reflect the will of most Iowans, and I’m not sure how far it follows the constitution.”

Iowans for Reproductive Freedom is taking a page right from the playbook of conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats and his organization, the Family Leader. In 2010, he and others were angered by the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous decision finding the state discriminated against same-sex couples by limiting civil marriage to couples of opposite gender. Vander Plaats’ campaign against the decision led to voters removing three Supreme Court justices that November.

Iowans who thought retaliation was wrong then for one decision among the hundreds that justices Marsha Ternus, David Baker and Michael Streit had made should not be rationalizing now why retribution against David May is somehow different and right.

Either your principles are carefully thought out and are firmly held, or your principles are as flexible as a foam pool noodle and you stand by them only when convenient.

Two Des Moines attorneys, Guy Cook and Cynthia Moser, both former presidents of the Iowa State Bar Association, are of the firmly-held-principles school of thought. They wrote in a recent guest column in the Des Moines Register, “Voting Justice May out will not, and cannot, change the opinion of the Iowa Supreme Court.”

They continued: “As children, we all learned the timeless proverb that two wrongs don’t make a right, a straightforward concept that sums up the enduring wisdom that responding to a perceived or real injustice with another act of injustice or wrongdoing is never justified or ethical.”

It is entirely proper to disagree with a judge’s ruling. Judges and attorneys often disagree over what a law means. Trying to oust an honorable member of the court because of such a disagreement moves us one step closer to judges making their decisions based on public opinion, not on guiding legal doctrines.

Cook and Moser explained it this way: “Reasonable people can, and do, disagree on abortion restrictions and reproductive rights. Indeed, three Iowa Supreme Court justices, including the chief justice, did just that, with detailed and forceful dissenting opinions.

“… When citizens disagree with a court’s interpretation of a law, they can petition the Legislature to amend the law, or, if they disagree with a court’s interpretation of the Constitution, they have the power to seek to amend the Constitution.”

Perpetuating the cycle of retribution that Bob Vander Plaats launched 14 years ago will not change how Iowa law views abortion. It will only serve to further undermine judicial independence in our state.

Iowans should not want that, regardless of what side we are on with one issue or another.