Trump’s bid to dismiss lawsuit against Register is blocked by judge

Amid allegations of “gamesmanship” and forum shopping, a federal judge has blocked, at least for now, President Donald Trump’s attempt to move his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster out of federal court and into state court.

Noting that Trump recently filed an appeal on one specific issue within the federal lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger found that because the president’s appeal had conferred jurisdiction of the case to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, he must first dismiss that appeal before voluntarily dismissing the underlying lawsuit.

For now, that means the president and his lawyers are pursuing the same legal case against the newspaper and pollster Ann Selzer in both state court and federal court.

The lawsuit was initiated in December 2024 when Trump sued the Register, its parent company, Gannett, and the Register’s former pollster, J. Ann Selzer, in Polk County District Court. The president alleged the newspaper’s Iowa Poll, which was published shortly before the Nov. 5 election, deliberately overstated support for the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 16 percentage points.

Trump argued the poll amounted to “brazen election interference” and violated Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act — claims the defendants have denied.

Attorneys for the president later expanded the lawsuit, adding claims by U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican who narrowly won reelection in the state’s 1st Congressional District, and by Brad Zaun, a former Republican state senator from Urbandale, who lost his bid for reelection.

At the defendants’ request, the case was transferred to federal court. However, a legal dispute soon arose over whether federal court was the proper forum for the case given the fact that Miller-Meeks and Zaun, like the defendants, are based in Iowa.

On May 23, 2025, a federal judge denied Trump’s motion to remand the case from federal court back to state court. In that decision, the court allowed the president to file an appeal on the issue but also ordered Trump to file an amended complaint removing Miller-Meeks and Zaun from the case, eliminating any claims that were exclusive to the two Iowa-resident plaintiffs.

Allegations of ‘gamesmanship’ and forum shopping

On May 23, 2025, the judge denied Trump’s motion to remand the case to state court. On June 2, 2025, lawyers for the president filed a petition for permission to appeal that decision, and the appeal itself was docketed that same day, according to court records.

Four weeks later, on June 30, 2025, Trump’s attorneys filed notice with the court that they were seeking to dismiss their federal lawsuit and, that day, they refiled the case in state court.

Lawyers for the Register objected, arguing that long-standing law bars litigants from dismissing a case they initiated “simply to avoid an adverse decision or seek a more favorable forum.”

The newspaper’s lawyers noted that in the federal case, Trump has lost his bid to have the case remanded to state court, lost his motion to stay the case, and been ordered to file a revised and amended complaint that conforms to the court’s orders.

The Register’s lawyers also argued the timing of the new state court lawsuit is “significant” in that it was filed just one day before Iowa’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, commonly known as an “anti-SLAPP law” that shields newspapers from baseless or frivolous claims, went into effect.

“This new legislation would apply to President Trump’s lawsuit,” the Register’s lawyers argued, calling the president’s actions an attempt to “escape the jurisdiction of the federal courts in time to restate his claims in Iowa’s state court without being subject to Iowa’s anti-SLAPP law.”

In response, lawyers for the president argued the “accusation of gamesmanship rings hollow” given the fact that the president first filed his case in state court only to see it see it moved to federal court at the newspaper’s urging. They also said the anti-SLAPP law isn’t applicable to their newly filed state case since it is based entirely on the lawsuit initially filed last December.

In ruling against the president on the dismissal of his federal case, Judge Ebinger noted that because Trump had not yet filed a motion to dismiss his June 2 appeal to the Eighth Circuit, she could “take no action that would affect the pending matter before the Eighth Circuit.” She stated that allowing the president to dismiss the underlying federal case would, for all practical purposes, “result in a dismissal of Trump’s appeal — which is procedurally improper.”

This article first appeared in Iowa Capital Dispatch.