“Reporting such a poll during a presidential and congressional election year is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values,” Beattie said. “The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”
An Iowa judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit accusing the Des Moines Register and its former pollster of misrepresenting key facts about the 2024 presidential race.
According to The Guardian, Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie described the case as “extraordinary,” saying that Trump’s argument could have a chilling effect that “discourage[s] others from reporting on and debating public affairs.”
Beattie then sided with defendant J. Ann Selzer, the Register’s former pollster, who had earlier described the lawsuit as a conspiracy theory and an affront to the First Amendment. The ruling came several hours after another court heard arguments on Trump’s decision to bann CNN, MSNow, and Politico from White House events.
In his ruling, Beattie said that Trump tried to “stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.”
The lawsuit was filed on Trump’s behalf after the president won Iowa in the 2024 general election; Selzer’s polling had, at the time of the race, given Democratic candidate Kamala Harris a slight single-digit lead. Trump later claimed that Selzer’s results had been engineered to Harris’s advantage.
After hearing arguments from both sides, Beattie concluded that the First Amendment’s protection for the press “is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”
“Reporting such a poll during a presidential and congressional election year is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values,” Beattie said. “The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which represented Selzer in the claim, has since praised Beattie’s ruling.
“We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought,” FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere said in a statement. “The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’ That may work for him as a campaign slogan, but it is not a thing in the law.”
In a statement, Selzer said that the difference between polling and election results is anything but deliberate and cannot be used to suggest a deliberate attempt at either misdirection or fraud.
“Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome,” Selzer said. “What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected. I am grateful that Judge Beattie’s ruling recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”
Sources
Iowa Judge Dismisses Trump’s Lawsuit Against The Des Moines Register
Judge dismisses President Donald Trump’s 2024 Iowa Poll lawsuit
Judge dismisses Trump’s ‘extraordinary’ lawsuit against Iowa newspaper and pollster
VICTORY: Iowa judge dismisses Trump’s lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer
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