Bird should abandon her attack on Iowa voting rights

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has decided to challenge a district-court ruling earlier this year that opened the door to providing voting materials in multiple languages.

“The Iowa English Language Reaffirmation Act is clear; all official documents are to be written in English — including voter registration forms,” Bird said in a statement. “We look forward to arguing our case in court to uphold the Act and secure the integrity of our elections.”

How seeking to disenfranchise Iowans with the right to vote but limited English language skills advances election integrity is a mystery. The 2002 law Bird is defending was a misguided legislative action that should be tossed on the scrap heap.

But Bird has decided to perpetuate the legacy of former Republican state senator and congressman Steve King, who spearheaded passage to the “official English” bill in the Legislature. Bird was working as King’s congressional chief of staff when he filed a lawsuit seeking to bar the secretary of state’s office from providing multilingual election forms.

In 2008, a judge agreed with King and issued an injunction against providing materials in multiple languages. Surprisingly, the constitutionality of the law was not central to the case.

In 2021, the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, filed legal action seeking to overturn the injunction on the grounds it violated constitutionally protected voting rights. This past June, District Court Judge Scott Rosenberg agreed.

"One would be hard-pressed to find a right that has been more frequently and unwaveringly praised in this nation than the right to vote,” Rosenberg wrote. “More to the point, American courts have consistently held that the right to vote is unquestionably protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

“The right to vote is not merely the ability to check boxes on a piece of paper. It is about being able to register, understanding what is on the ballot, and knowing when and where voting takes place. All of these facets are furthered by allowing counties to provide and accept voting materials in non-English languages,” Rosenberg wrote.

It’s tough to disagree with Rosenberg’s straightforward reasoning. And yet, Bird is going to try. We hope her chances for victory are as dubious as her reasons for appealing this ruling.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com