Lawyers for the state told the Iowa Supreme Court on Wednesday that it should reverse a lower court’s refusal to dismiss an alleged whistleblower’s wrongful-termination lawsuit against the governor.

The lawsuit involves Polly Carver-Kimm, the former spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Health. Carver-Kimm was fired in 2020, and subsequently filed a lawsuit against the department, its top executives, Gov. Kim Reynolds and the governor’s then-communications director, Pat Garrett.

As part of that lawsuit, Carver-Kimm claimed was fired, after 13 years of employment without a negative performance view, because she tried to comply with Iowa’s Open Records Law and provide information about the COVID-19 pandemic to the media and public.

In court filings, her lawyer has argued that “at the direction and behest of Gov. Reynolds and her communications director, Pat Garrett, IDPH sought to slow, stifle and otherwise divert the free flow of information to the media and public concerning the spread of COVID-19 and the state of Iowa’s response to the ongoing pandemic.”

The lawsuit alleges that Carver-Kimm’s efforts to comply with Iowa’s Open Records Law “ran headlong into the defendants’ desire to suppress and bury unfavorable or unflattering information” about the pandemic.

State argues Reynolds couldn’t fire Carver-Kimm

The lawsuit makes two separate claims against the state and the other defendants in the case: First, that Caver-Kimm was wrongfully terminated in violation of...

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