Former federal prosecutor sues Iowa Judicial Branch over records access

The Iowa Judicial Building. (Photo and seal courtesy of the Iowa Judicial Branch)

A former federal prosecutor is suing the state over an alleged failure to turn over records related to an ethics complaint he filed against lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office where he once worked.

Robert Teig, who spent 32 years with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Iowa before his retirement in April 2011, filed the lawsuit last week in Polk County District Court.

Named as defendants are the Iowa Judicial Branch, the state’s Attorney Disciplinary Board, the Iowa Office of Professional Regulation, and several individuals responsible for administering those entities.

In his lawsuit, Teig alleges that at some point prior to February 2023, he filed an ethics complaint with Attorney Disciplinary Board asking that it look into the actions of three prosecutors who work in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Iowa.

Teig said Wednesday that his complaint was tied to the prosecutors’ handling of a criminal matter he was familiar with through the assistance he provided to the defendant’s attorney.

In February 2023, the board wrote to Teig saying it had dismissed the complaint after reviewing it and unspecified “responses” to the complaint that it had collected. According to the lawsuit, the board also alleged that “many, if not all, of these concerns have been reviewed by judges in the Northern District of Iowa, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, and Office of Professional Responsibility for the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The lawsuit alleges that the board’s claim lacks merit because Teig had asked the Executive Office for United States Attorneys and the Office of Professional Responsibility to review the matters, and they had refused. “No judge looked at the ethics issues,” Teig adds in his lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that earlier this year, Teig asked the Attorney Disciplinary Board and Office of Professional Regulation for the “responses” referenced by the board and was denied access on the grounds that the two entities are not funded with taxpayer money and therefore are not subject to the Iowa Open Records Law. The Iowa Judicial Branch also denied Teig’s requests for access, the lawsuit claims.

In September, according to the lawsuit, Teig wrote to State Court Administrator Robert Gast and stated that even if the disciplinary board and the Office of Professional Regulation were not considered governmental entities under the Open Records Law, the law stipulates that a governmental body cannot “prevent the examination or copying of a public record by contracting with a nongovernment body to perform any of its duties or functions.”

The records sought, Teig argued, were received under the authority of, and belong to, the Iowa Judicial Branch.

State officials then argued that even if the requested records were deemed to be governmental documents subject to the Open Records Law, there is an exemption that allows governmental agencies to keep confidential any communications from people “outside of government” if those individuals would be discouraged from making those communications if they were publicly accessible.

Teig argued federal prosecutors could not be considered people “outside of government.” According to the lawsuit, Gast responded by saying his office was done responding to Teig’s inquiries and that the provision of other records sought by Teig might be contingent on the payment of fees for access.

Teig’s lawsuit seeks damages for alleged Open Records Law violations and an injunction ordering the defendants to provide the requested records.

The defendants have yet to file a response to the lawsuit. Tony Morfitt, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of Iowa, declined to comment on Teig’s ethics complaint, and Steve Davis, spokesman for the Iowa Judicial Branch, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

In 2023, Teig sued the City of City Rapids over its refusal to disclose job applications filed by people seeking employment as city clerk and city attorney. The Iowa Supreme Court eventually ruled that only those job applications filed by people “outside of government” could be withheld from public disclosure, while applications filed by then-current employees of the city would have to be disclosed.