Judge Throws Out Trump's Case Against Iowa Pollster

Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters An Iowa judge has tossed out President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and its former pollster over a survey that inaccurately predicted the 2024 presidential election results.

The president had accused pollster J.

Ann Selzer of “brazen election interference” after she released a survey days before the election that found then-Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 points in Iowa.

Trump went on to win the heavily Republican state by more than 13 percentage points and later argued that the poll had intentionally created a “false narrative of inevitability for Harris,” in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act’s prohibition on deceptive advertising.

The defendants countered that political polling was protected by the First Amendment.

Iowa District Judge Scott Beattie soundly rejected Trump’s reasoning on Wednesday and dismissed the case, ruling that the poll and its coverage were constitutionally protected political speech.

The suit sought 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 wrote in his ruling .

Trump’s lawyers had argued that the polling was commercial speech, which enjoys a lower standard of constitutional protection, because polls are for-profit products.

As precedent, it cited a Supreme Court case that actually found the opposite: that editorial content is not commercial speech just because it costs money to acquire or produce, Beattie wrote.

Reporting on a political poll during an election year “is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values,” he added.

“The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.” After the ruling, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Associated Press the president would appeal the case to the Iowa Supreme Court.

The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.

In a statement , Selzer—who was represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—said she was “grateful” that the ruling “reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.” FIRE’s chief counsel Bob Corn-Revere, who led the defense, said the lawsuit was “laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought.” Since returning to office, the president has tried to control press coverage by filing multiple lawsuits against news outlets, taking away press access to the Pentagon, banning major networks from covering the White House, and belittling and insulting individual reporters, particularly women.