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Lawyers for the State of Iowa are asking a judge to dismiss a public-records lawsuit by arguing the Iowa Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board is not a public body that’s subject to the Open Records Law.
The lawsuit was filed in Polk County District Court last year by Robert Teig, who spent 32 years with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Iowa before his retirement in April 2011.
Named as defendants are the Iowa Judicial Branch, the state’s Attorney Disciplinary Board, the Iowa Office of Professional Regulation, and several individuals responsible for administering those entities.
In his lawsuit, Teig alleges that at some point prior to February 2023, he filed an ethics complaint with the Attorney Disciplinary Board asking that it look into the actions of three prosecutors who work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Iowa.
In February 2023, the board wrote to Teig saying it had dismissed the complaint after reviewing it and unspecified “responses” to the complaint that it had collected. According to the lawsuit, the board also alleged that “many, if not all, of these concerns have been reviewed by judges in the Northern District of Iowa, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, and Office of Professional Responsibility for the U.S. Department of Justice.”
The lawsuit alleges that the board’s claims lack merit because Teig had asked the Executive Office for United States Attorneys and the Office of Professional Responsibility to review the matters, and they refused. “No judge looked at the ethics issues,” Teig states in his lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that earlier this year, Teig asked the Attorney Disciplinary Board and Office of Professional Regulation for the complaint “responses” referenced by the board. After the request was denied, Teig sought “all records that discuss, deal with, respond to, or refer to” his previous requests for information and was denied some of the information on the grounds that they were covered by attorney-client privilege or were attorney work product.
Teig’s lawsuit seeks damages for alleged Open Records Law violations and an injunction ordering the defendants to provide the requested records.
Earlier this month, the Iowa attorney general’s office filed a motion seeking dismissal of the case, citing state law that gives the Iowa Supreme Court the power to establish attorney disciplinary rules. One of the rules approved by the court states that the Iowa Attorney Disciplinary Board “must keep all files confidential, unless the board chair or the chair’s designee otherwise provides or directs in writing for disciplinary purposes or pursuant to a specific Supreme Court rule.”
In its motion to dismiss, the attorney general’s office noted that this rule is similar to those of other state licensing boards that also consider their “disciplinary files” – specifically, complaints and investigative material — to be confidential.
In his response to that motion, Teig argued the attorney general is addressing only his request for the complaint responses generated by the three attorneys – and not the records he subsequently requested under Iowa’s Open Records Law. In his response, Teig notes that agency-approved policies and rules on confidentiality are not trumped by the disclosure requirements of Iowa law.
On Tuesday, the attorney general’s office filed a response to Teig’s arguments, asserting that the state’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the Iowa Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board “are
not governmental bodies,” and so the requested records, “which are owned by them, are arguably not public records.”
A hearing on the state’s motion to dismiss is scheduled for Feb. 18.