Seven people face charges for blocking traffic during an October protest last year. Six have accepted plea deals, and the seventh is set to go to trial in March. Although none of the charges rise above a misdemeanor, the prosecution has attracted significant attention.
Both in private meetings and public resolutions, an effort is underway to sway Johnson County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith to exercise her discretion and abandon the charges.
Each charge stems from the same incident on Oct. 16, 2023. After a student organization at the University of Iowa invited Chloe Cole, a California activist who speaks against gender-affirming care for minors, to give a guest lecture at Iowa City's Iowa Memorial Union. That evening, a crowd of more than 100 showed up outside to protest. Over the course of the evening, protesters spilled into a nearby intersection, ignored calls by police to get out of the street and blocked traffic for 20 minutes, per a police complaint and video footage from the night.
A month later, the University of Iowa Police Department contacted seven participants.
“If you could give me a callback, please, I’d like to discuss some things with you. I have some paperwork I need to turn over to you,” said UIPD’s Detective Ian Mallory in a voicemail provided to IPR News.
Most received two charges: a simple misdemeanor for interfering with police and a serious misdemeanor for disorderly conduct related to obstructing the street. The latter used to be a simple misdemeanor, but in 2021, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law — the so-called “Back the Blue” bill — in response to the 2020 George Floyd protests that had people in towns like Iowa City marching through the streets daily. The bill raised penalties for several charges associated with protests.
But the charges don't exist solely within a protest context. In April of last year, an Iowa City man who was “trying to get hit by vehicles” was charged by police with serious misdemeanor disorderly conduct. And in the summer of 2022, another person got the same charge for screaming in the middle of a street. Neither person was connected to a protest effort.
Jon Green, a member of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, which sets the budget for the county attorney’s office, says these seven charges are different. He sees this as an effort to silence protesters. He is critical of the legislative changes and has personally lobbied Zimmermann Smith to drop the charges. As of this week, Green is asking the county Democratic Party to censure Zimmermann Smith for pursuing them.
“It’s not that they (the Johnson County Attorney’s Office) necessarily shouldn’t be pressing charges. It’s that if you are going to charge people, you should charge everybody or nobody,” Green says, questioning the selection of defendants, all of whom identify as transgender or nonbinary. “Look at the people being charged.”
Fellow Supervisor V Fixmer-Oraiz echoed these concerns in a dialogue published with Iowa City Councilmember Laura Bergus on Jan. 18.
“There were no arrests made at that time, and I followed up with UIPD leadership, and they said, you know, that their practice is to not arrest people at protests because it only escalates situations. Which, you know, that's probably very true. But they used body cams to identify people. And, since then, about a month or six weeks later, about six or seven folx were charged and brought in. And all of them are non-binary or trans people,” Fixmer-Oraiz said.
A few days later, the Iowa City Human Rights Commission also decided to weigh in.
“Their charges are under a new ‘back the blue’ law passed in the wake of the 2020 protests of the murder of George Floyd that specifically criminalizes a standard practice of protest: blocking traffic," the commission wrote in a Jan. 24 statement. "... Although the law may allow for the arrest and charge of these protestors, we question the purpose of this law and believe that its application in this case falls under what Dr. King described as unjust."
It’s true that throughout the summer of 2020, protesters were allowed to march through Iowa City’s streets. Not only were charges not filed then, but police even directed traffic to keep most cars from rolling down the road at the same time as protesters. But while stiffer penalties weren’t in effect yet, the charge — disorderly conduct for obstructing a street — did exist, even if it was not enforced.
Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel told IPR News in an email that it's "highly inappropriate" for an elected official to influence or pressure anyone involved in the judicial process.
"At minimum," he said, "this conduct is unethical and unprofessional."
Zimmermann Smith did not comment on pending litigation, but her predecessor did. Janet Lyness, who served as the Johnson County Attorney for 16 years before Zimmermann Smith, did not take issue with elected officials expressing their opinions to the county attorney. But she drew the line at officials taking action against the county attorney for what amounted to doing her job.
“The political views of the county attorney or recorder — they (the county attorney) can certainly be supportive of actions taken by people — it doesn’t mean they can ignore their duties and their job,” she said. “They still have to uphold the law, even if they disagree with it.”
Hanging over the effort to pressure Zimmermann Smith is the reality that if local officials decline to prosecute, the Iowa Attorney General no longer needs a referral to prosecute a criminal case on behalf of the state. Even if the Johnson County attorney declines to prosecute, AG Brenna Bird can step in.
The future of Green's resolution to censure the county attorney is unknown. Ed Cranston, chair of the Johnson County Democratic Party, said he isn't aware of the party taking this kind of action in the past. He said any resolution would be voted on by the county Central Committee. Each of those members and their alternates were elected at 64 caucus precincts across the county on a cold Jan.15.
This Thursday's meeting will be the Central Committee's first time getting together. It will also be when the resolution gets discussed. Whoever shows up will decide the resolution's fate.
