Iowa court reverses $1.5M retaliation award

The Iowa Supreme Court reversed a $1.5 million jury award to a former Iowa Division of Workers Compensation commissioner in his lawsuit alleging that he was retaliated against by former Gov. Terry Branstad because of his sexual orientation.

In Godfrey v. State of Iowa, the state’s high court held in a 4-3 decision on Wednesday that former Commissioner Chris Godfrey failed to show that Mr. Branstad knew about his sexual orientation at the time he reduced his salary and later requested his resignation.

In 2011, Mr. Godfrey, who was two years into a six-year term as the state’s workers comp commissioner, claimed that the governor’s office reduced his salary from $112,068 to $73,250. In 2013, he filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, alleging that the salary reduction was an attempt to intimidate him into resigning and that the governor’s office, “deprived plaintiff of equal protection” by “enforcing policies that treat homosexual appointive state officers differently than heterosexual appointive state officers,” according to the court documents.

He also claimed that the former governor demanded he resign because of partisan politics.

At the time of the filing, attorneys for Mr. Branstad, who in 2017 was appointed U.S. ambassador to China, said he knew nothing about Mr. Godfrey’s sexual orientation.

On July 15, 2019, a jury in Polk County, Iowa, awarded Mr. Godfrey $1.5 million after finding that the commissioner was discriminated against on the basis of his sexual orientation and political affiliations.

The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the decision, holding that Mr. Godfrey relied on circumstantial evidence that Mr. Branstad knew of his sexual orientation. The court also found that Mr. Godfrey had “no procedural or substantive due process right under the Iowa Constitution in continuing his salary at a particular level.”