Des Moines, Iowa — A district court judge has dismissed a request by the state to throw out a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the former spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Public Health.
Former department spokesperson Polly Carver-Kimm sued Governor Kim Reynolds and administrators in the Health Department last year, alleging she was forced to leave her job for providing open records information to the media. The lawsuit says requests that Carver-Kimm had previously replied to were required to go through the governor’s office once the pandemic started. As first reported by the Des Moines Register, the judge ruled Carver-Kimm in her job had “the specific obligation to fulfill open record requests,” and dismissed the claim by the Assistant Attorney General defending Reynolds that state open records law is not “a well-recognized public policy.”
The court is in the process of deciding which parts of the lawsuit can continue to a jury trial, which is scheduled for July 2022.
