Iowa’s first Republican Attorney General in more than 40 years is making good on her campaign promise to challenge bad policies from the Biden administration in court. In her first year in office, the Des Moines Register found Attorney General Brenna Bird brought, joined, or filed briefs in at least 12 lawsuits against the federal government.
Bird is fighting the Biden administration on issues such as the administration’s failure to secure the border which has led to a fentanyl crisis in her state, and climate change mandates, many of which would severely harm her state’s agricultural industry.
In her most recent lawsuit, Bird led a nine-state coalition challenging the Biden Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule that mandates businesses report their greenhouse gas emissions. According to her press release, this is the second major state-led lawsuit against the SEC mandate, after 10 states filed in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in March.
According to Bird, “The new rule burdens businesses with costly red tape and forces business owners to reveal proprietary information that they need to keep confidential for their business’s success. The increased regulations will also slow production, crush the supply chain, and hurt family farmers.”
Before taking office as Iowa Attorney General in January 2023, Bird served as the County Attorney for Fremont County and Guthrie County. She was elected by her fellow county prosecutors to leadership roles with the Iowa County Attorney Association, including serving as the Association's President.
As part of a massive overhaul of the Iowa state government which took effect last July, the state attorney general, not local counties, now has sole jurisdiction over prosecuting election-related crimes. Last fall, Bird was asked in a news roundtable about how she plans to address the added responsibilities.
“Election integrity is so important,” Bird told the panel. “We want people to have confidence that the elections are correct and confidence in the outcome of the elections. We are working on how to implement that new law, as we do have jurisdiction over all those election integrity issues that are in the election section of the Iowa code. We want to make sure that those cases are investigated and where there's a violation of law that those are prosecuted.”
In celebrating #WomensHistoryMonth , RNLA honors another lawyer of excellence: @BrennaBird - the first Republican Iowa attorney general in more than 40 years! pic.twitter.com/L5GVutxGSB
— RNLA ⚖️ (@TheRepLawyer) March 27, 2024
In addition, Bird recently filed an appeal to a court ruling striking down a 2002 state law which requires voting registration materials be printed in English only. Bird’s decision to appeal was widely criticized in the media, but she stood her ground, telling a local TV station last fall, “We are appealing [because] the law that we have here in Iowa says those documents need to be in English and it's important for election integrity, as well because of translation issues. It's also important that we follow the law and part of my job as attorney general is to uphold the law.”
Bird is adhering to her role in the executive branch of government, which is not to make law but enforce the laws passed by the legislature.
The RNLA is thrilled to announce Bird will join the 2024 National Policy Conference on May 17, in Arlington, Virginia as part of a panel of Republican state attorneys general.
For more information on the National Policy Conference and how to attend, click here.