Iowa Judicial Impeachments Sought

Now that voters have recalled three of the Iowa supreme court justices who voted for marriage equality, Republicans in the legislature want to impeach the rest.

Five Republicans in the state house of representatives filed articles of impeachment Thursday targeting the four remaining justices who participated in the unanimous 2009 decision: Mark Cady, Brent Appel, Daryl Hecht, and David Wiggins, The Iowa Independent reports.

The impeachment resolutions were filed by Tom Shaw, Dwayne Alons, Betty De Boef, Glen Massie, and Kim Pearson. Their resolutions were referred to the house judiciary committee and will likely die there, but they nonetheless drew strong criticism from Democratic politicians and judicial watchdog groups.

Democratic state representative Kevin McCarthy issued a statement calling on house speaker Kraig Paulsen and majority leader Linda Upmeyer to "either publicly condemn your own Republican members as well as members of the Republican Party for offering this outrageous, extremist proposal ... or allow a full and open impeachment proceeding for all Iowans to consider knowing house Democrats will use every available procedural tool to shut down the Iowa house and defeat this right-wing effort." The nonpartisan group Justice Without Politics deemed the resolutions "a sad attempt to misuse the impeachment process for political gain" and "completely out of touch with Iowans."

In November voters recalled the three supreme court justices who were up for routine retention votes: Marsha Ternus, Michael Streit, and David Baker. Gov. Terry Branstad appointed replacements for them in February.