UPDATES & ANALYSIS

The Iowa Supreme Court’s views have evolved on equal protection, according to Drake Law Review article co-authored by Justice Edward Mansfield

by Rox Laird | April 13, 2018

The Iowa Constitution states in Article I, Section 6 that “All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens.”

Iowa judges today read this clause as the equivalent of the Equal Protection Clause in the 14^th Amendment to the federal Constitution. But that may not be what the authors of the Iowa Constitution had in mind when it was written, according to an article published in the Drake Law Review by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Edward Mansfield and Des Moines attorney Conner Wasson (Exploring the Original Meaning of Article I, Section 6 of the Iowa Constitution).

In fact, as Mansfield and Wasson point out, Article I, Section 6 contains two provisions, one saying laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation, and the other saying the Legislature may not grant privileges or immunities to a citizen or class of citizens.

The two provisions were introduced at different times, and the authors suggest they may have meant different things: The “uniform operation” clause first appeared in the 1844 Constitution (which was not ratified) and the “privileges and immunities” clause was added in the 1857 Constitution that governs today.

“We conclude, based on text and legislative history, that the two clauses in Article I, Section 6 may have been intended to serve different roles,” the authors write. “The uniformity clause was aimed at geographical discrimination, the privileges and immunities clause at special legislative franchises or monopolies.”

As evidence that Iowa Supreme Court in the 19^th century did not see Article I, Section 6 as an equal-rights guarantee, the authors cite two landmark Iowa decisions on civil rights: Clark v. Board of Directors (1868), which struck down segregated public schools, and Coger v. Northwest Union Packet Company (1873), which held as unreasonable a whites-only steamboat dining room. Both decisions cited different provisions of the Iowa Constitution.

The Court’s thinking, according to Mansfield and Wasson, began to evolve late in the 19^th century when parties began citing Article I, Section 6, along with the federal Equal Protection Clause in appeals to the Iowa Supreme Court. And, in 1906, the Court held that the same principles applied to both clauses. That view continues today.

“Since 1980,” Mansfield and Wasson write, “the Iowa Supreme Court has generally used federal Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence as its starting point when considering claims under Article I, Section 6. Often, it has also used that jurisprudence as its endpoint — reaching the same result as the federal courts.”

Tags: Equal Protection Clause, Iowa Constitution, Justice Mansfield