Important reminder: Free speech includes the right to criticize government

This core right becomes compromised when elected officials feel empowered to silence and intimidate their critics through government threats

The opening passages of the Institute for Justice’s demand that the Decatur County attorney retract his threat of legal action against a critic of a county supervisor’s absenteeism from county board meetings.

A CONSTITUTIONAL SHOWDOWN taking shape in southern Iowa’s Decatur County could put taxpayers on the hook financially to defend the county’s efforts to silence a critic of public officials there.

The Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm, wrote Decatur County Attorney Alan Wilson last week expressing its concerns about Wilson’s recent threat to Rita Audlehelm that she could be sued for defamation for her comments in a letter to the editor published in the Leon Journal-Reporter.

The institute said Wilson’s actions show why the Iowa Legislature needs to pass House File 472 or its Senate companion, Senate File 47. These bills create an expedited means for defendants in frivolous libel lawsuits to get those cases dismissed before spending tens of thousands of dollars defending themselves for speech protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

“Americans have a right to criticize their government without facing frivolous lawsuits from elected officials,” Brian Morris, an attorney for the institute, said in a statement.

“Rita exemplifies what America stands for,” he said. “She cares deeply about her community; she’s engaged, and she expresses her concerns thoughtfully through her speech. In response, the county has tried to silence Rita through baseless and frivolous threats.

“That’s the work of kings, not elected officials,” Morris added.

The institute’s media release quoted comments I made in a recent column on Wilson’s dispute with Audlehelm.

“Democracies falter when citizens lose interest or cannot ask questions, seek answers, and make comment without fearing government reprisal against them,” I wrote in February. “When an elected official pursues a taxpayer for her fair comment and criticism, it seems like a strange way to protect and defend the Constitution.”

Rita Audlehelm and Noah Petersen

AUDLEHELM IS NOT THE FIRST IOWAN government officials have confronted for using First Amendment rights. The Institute for Justice also represents Noah Petersen, who was arrested and prosecuted for speaking during a Newton City Council meeting to criticize the mayor and police department about actions of a specific police officer and the police department’s overall treatment of Newton residents.

Petersen faced two criminal charges of “disrupting a lawful assembly.” At trial, a magistrate found him not guilty, writing in the verdict Petersen had a constitutional right to voice his concerns during the public comment period at the city council meeting.

Petersen then sued the mayor, police chief and city for violating his civil rights for retaliating against him because of his comments to the council.

Petersen’s and Audlehelm’s cases shine the spotlight on the broader issue of government trying to silence people who disagree with actions or comments of government officials.

In his letter to Wilson, Morris reminded the county attorney of the U.S. Supreme Court’s finding in the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case in 1964: An indispensable principle of free speech guaranteed by the First amendment is that “debate of public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

Audlehelm regularly attends meetings of the Decatur County Board of Supervisors. She objected in her recent letter to the editor to the absence of Supervisor Steve Fulkerson from the courthouse in Leon for 16 of 17 supervisors’ meetings since September 30, 2024.

Morris told Wilson that if county officials are unhappy with Audlehelm’s commentary, the solution is for the county to provide more public discussion, not less. By live-streaming the supervisors’ meetings and archiving those recordings, the board would ensure the people of Decatur County have ready access to what occurred at the meetings and would not be as reliant on Audlehelm’s summaries of those meetings.

Morris formally asked Wilson to retract his letter and publicly acknowledge that Audlehelm has a First Amendment right to criticize the board of supervisors through letters to the local newspapers.

RECENT EFFORTS TO SILENCE CRITICS of government officials or to punish media outlets, academic institutions and attorneys reach beyond the Decatur County Courthouse and Newton City Hall.

These efforts include the president’s executive orders aimed at punishing law firms and individual lawyers who represented his adversaries or were involved in investigations of him before he was re-elected last year.

The efforts also include denying the Associated Press, the world’s largest source of news, from covering news events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One until the AP adopts the White House’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.

The president’s efforts to intimidate colleges and universities with his threats or actions to withhold federal research grants because he dislikes internal decisions the schools made show another way officials can retaliate.

The president’s efforts hit closer to home, too, when he sued the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for the Iowa Poll findings a few days before the 2024 elections. Although he won the election and carried Iowa by a wide margin, the president accuses the newspaper and Selzer of consumer fraud because the poll’s findings did not match the eventual outcome of Iowa voting.

Morris, the Institute for Justice attorney, made comments in his letter to the Decatur County attorney that also apply to the president of the United States:

“Like everyone here in America, Ms. Audlehelm has views on governance that are shared by some and disliked by others. Thankfully, the First Amendment stands ready to protect our right to disagree with our elected officials.

“… That freedom to dissent is what separates America from totalitarian regimes elsewhere in the world. But that core First Amendment tenet becomes compromised when elected officials feel empowered to silence and intimidate critics through the threat of baseless lawsuits.”

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