Iowa has the only all-male supreme court in the country. Could that change this year?
Gov. Kim Reynolds could have a chance to change Iowa's status as the state with the only all-male supreme court in the country when she appoints her first justice this fall.
Iowa's state judicial nominating commission will meet Monday and Tuesday to interview 21 applicants for the open seat created by the planned retirement of Justice Bruce Zager in September. Of those 21, which include a mix of judges, prosecutors, and private-practice and corporate attorneys, 14 are women.
Zager has served on the state's high court since 2011, when he was appointed by then-Gov. Terry Branstad. Zager was one of three appointments made to fill vacancies created when three other justices were voted off the bench for their role in a unanimous 2009 decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Iowa. All three appointees were white men.
Zager's retirement is the first vacancy on the court since 2011, and his replacement will be the first appointment for Reynolds, Iowa's first female governor, who took office last year.
Brenna Smith, a spokesperson for Reynolds, said in an email that the governor will focus on choosing the most qualified person and "will have no litmus test for judicial candidates" other than following the rule of law.
"There are many qualities of a great judge, and on a multi-member court like the Iowa Supreme Court, the governor believes that it’s important to consider what experiences and expertise each nominee would bring to the current mix of justices," Smith said in the email. "Those experiences and perspectives can be formed by gender, race, geography and economic status, to name a few."
But in terms of diversity on its supreme court, Iowa is dead last, according to data from the National Center for State Courts. Iowa is the only state in 2018 to have no women on its high court. It has never appointed a person of color to the supreme court.
Voters booted the most recent woman, former Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, in 2010, along with two male colleagues. Before Ternus, only one other woman, Justice Linda K. Neuman, had served on Iowa's high court.
Wisconsin, where six out of seven justices are female, has the highest percentage of women on its supreme court, the center's data show. Supreme courts in nine other states also have a majority of female justices. But men make up the majority in the remainder, including in 15 states that have only one woman on their supreme court.
'It’s hard to explain how there are no women. None. Zero. That can’t be accidental.'
Celeste Bremer isn't sure how to fully explain it, but she believes there's some bias in the system that's kept women from making it through the application process or being seen as viable by governors who make the final appointment decision.
"It’s hard to explain how there are no women. None. Zero. That can’t be accidental," said Bremer, a federal magistrate judge who handles cases in the southern district of Iowa.
Under Iowa's merit selection process for choosing judges, the state nominating commission will send three nominees to Reynolds for consideration and she will appoint one to the seven-member court. Applicants must be licensed lawyers, live in the state and be able to serve a full six-year term before turning 72.
The process involves a written application detailing the applicant's legal career and community involvement, as well as one-on-one interviews with the commission members and a panel interview with the full commission.
Women have made up 18 percent of applicants for open Iowa Supreme Court seats since 1978, according to data provided by the Iowa Judicial Branch. Of those 66 female applicants, the state nominating commission sent six women to the governor for consideration, and two were appointed as justices. That's a 3 percent success rate for female applicants, compared with a 6 percent success rate for male applicants.
On the Iowa Court of Appeals, the state's other appellate court, women have made up 22 percent of applicants since 1976, data show. Of the 116 female applicants, 21 were sent to the governor for consideration and six were appointed. Both men and women who applied to be on the appeals court had about a 5 percent success rate.
For the current vacancy, the potential pool of applicants included Iowa's 198 state judges, 70 percent of whom are male and 96 percent of whom are white, according to Iowa Judicial Branch data. Iowa has 59 female judges compared with 139 male judges. There are six African-American judges, two Asian-American judges and no Hispanic judges. Iowa's 143 magistrates are 67 percent male and 98 percent white. There are three Hispanic magistrates in the state, but no African-American or Asian-American magistrates.
Women make up 50.3 percent of Iowa's overall population, according to 2017 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Iowa's population is 85.7 non-Hispanic white, 6 percent Hispanic or Latino, 3.8 percent black or African-American and 2.6 percent Asian-American. The applicants for Zager's seat include one African-American Iowan: District Associate Judge Romonda Belcher, who was the first black woman to become an Iowa judge.
Bremer said the lack of women on the supreme court is not a "pipeline" issue, since the same merit selection system has placed four women on Iowa's nine-member court of appeals. Iowa's two Asian-American judges also sit on that court; one of them, Christopher McDonald, is interviewing for the supreme court seat.
Gender alone is not a reason to appoint someone, Bremer said, but there are many "top-notch" female candidates. She said the lack of women in the judiciary merits a close look, just as it would if women were voting in disproportionately low numbers.
"If somebody was consistently blocking women from voting, wouldn’t we all say, 'Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on in that precinct?" she said.
Bremer said it's clear the commission and governor have taken geographic diversity into account since Iowa's justices come from several different judicial districts around the state. (Zager, the retiring justice, is from Waterloo.) So they could consider gender and other types of diversity as well, she said.
It comes back to women having the right as citizens to participate fully in all areas of government, she said.
"You’re really not as much looking for diversity as you are representation because you’re a citizen," she said. "So I don’t see why women have to justify having a seat. They’re entitled to it."
'We will have a more diverse applicant pool for this vacancy'
The nominating commission and Reynolds could also choose a justice from among Iowa's licensed lawyers, who are about 65 percent male and 35 percent female, according to the Iowa Judicial Branch.
Members of the Iowa State Bar Association, which is a voluntary association that about 85 percent of Iowa lawyers belong to, largely do not self-report their race. But an average of monthly data from the association over the past 11 months shows 43.5 percent of its roughly 8,000 members are female.
Bar association President Tom Levis said the association supports a diverse judiciary on the principle that judges make decisions that affect all Iowans.
"Judges make decisions involving and affecting all Iowans, whether they are male or female, old or young or African-American, Latino or Asian or whatever," he said. "And the courts need to be a good broad section of all Iowans so they can take into account the lives of those citizens whom have lived in Iowa."
Emily Chafa, who chairs the association's diversity and inclusiveness committee, said a variety of backgrounds and perspectives helps the Supreme Court do its work better because the court is a collaborative body whose members discuss and debate their decisions.
Chafa helped organize a recent legal education program aimed at "demystifying" the Iowa Supreme Court application process. The program, which attracted about 40 registered participants, was open to all bar members, but Chafa said one of the goals is to encourage more diverse applicants to apply.
"We will have a more diverse applicant pool for this vacancy of well-qualified women and well-qualified lawyers and judges of color," she said.