A Polk County judge has dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and political pollster J. Ann Selzer.
Trump, 1st District Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former state Sen. Brad Zaun claimed an Iowa Poll before the 2024 election was a form of consumer fraud. The poll put then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Trump in Iowa by 3 percentage points, but Trump won by just over 13 percentage points.
Judge Scott Beattie said in his ruling the poll cannot be called fraudulent for being wrong, in part because opinion polls are “inherently uncertain.” He said the poll is also protected as free speech under the First Amendment.
“At its core, the plaintiffs’ petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability,” Beattie said. “After considering the parties’ arguments, the court must conclude that the protection is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”
Beattie said if the lawsuit were allowed to go forward it could discourage others from reporting on public affairs.
FIRE, the free speech organization that represented Selzer in the case, said the lawsuit was designed to intimidate other news organizations.
“This was never about ‘consumer fraud.’ Nor was it about winning in court. Trump’s lawsuit was about intimidating perceived critics into silence by making them waste time and money on lawyers to defend perfectly legal speech,” the group said in a statement.
FIRE pointed out that in 2025, Iowa passed so-called anti-SLAPP legislation aimed at preventing lawsuits targeted at political or protected speech.
Selzer has called the 2024 poll a “spectacular miss.” She said she used the same methodology that she had used before that had earned her a reputation for accurate polling. Selzer left political polling after the election but said that decision had already been made.
In a statement on the lawsuit dismissal, Selzer said no poll guarantees the outcome of an election.
“What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected,” Selzer said. “I am grateful that Judge Beattie’s ruling recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”
