The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decided Friday that President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register should be returned to state jurisdiction, marking a significant victory for the president in the courtroom.
The pollster and the newspaper are accused of distributing a false pre-election survey in advance of the 2024 presidential election, according to the lawsuit, which was first filed in Polk County late last year. When Trump won Iowa by a wide margin, the contested poll that predicted then-Vice President Kamala Harris would win the state was wrong. According to his legal team, the study violated Iowa’s consumer protection statutes by misrepresenting public opinion and amounted to “election interference.”
The defendants’ attorneys had previously been successful in getting the case transferred to federal court, arguing that the change was necessary due to national political ramifications. Trump, however, was granted his request to have the case handled at the state level by the appellate court, which issued a letter of mandamus telling the lower federal court to reject its claim.
The ruling, according to a statement from Trump’s legal team, is “a victory for truth and fairness” because it guarantees that Iowa voters, not federal bureaucrats, will decide the case. Lawyers for Selzer and The Des Moines Register stressed that the decision is about jurisdictional process, not whether Trump’s accusations are true, and they were confident the claims will be rejected in the end.
Hearings in the lawsuit are now anticipated to resume later this year in Polk County District Court. Although the decision doesn’t address the merits of Trump’s complaint, legal experts point out that it shows how the administration is still pushing the limits of state consumer protection laws, media duty, and political speech.