Iowa Supreme Court says alleged sex harassment by former county attorney didn't merit ouster
An elected prosecutor in southeast Iowa says he will be back on the job after the state’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that alleged sexual harassment didn’t qualify as willful misconduct meriting removal from office under state law.
Former Van Buren County Attorney Abraham Watkins apologized for his behavior at a press conference Tuesday but said the county board of supervisors did not have accurate information and even-handed professional advice when it voted to remove him from office in September 2016. The Hawk Eye has a report on the press conference, while the Des Moines Register and the Legal Profession Blog covered the June 29 opinion of the Iowa Supreme Court.
Watkins said in his press conference that he has not consumed alcohol since his wife delivered an ultimatum to him in 2016. “I make no excuse for my behavior,” he said. “This is a straight-up apology.”
Watkins’ office was attached to his home in Keosauqua, Iowa. A legal assistant accused him of coming into the office to get coffee wearing only boxer briefs or athletic shorts, showing her two photos of his naked wife after work hours, telling the assistant that her “boobs [were] distracting him,” complaining about his sex life, asking about her “broken vagina” after he overheard a conversation about a gynecologist visit, and talking about nude photos of his old girlfriends.
A part-time county attorney who worked with Watkins said he had used a crude sexual term for an attorney and she accused him of “smelling like booze” during a domestic-abuse trial. He denied drinking during the trial, but began receiving medical care for drinking issues.
The county supervisors sought Watkins’ removal from office, and a district court ordered removal based on the sex harassment claim. The state Supreme Court reversed.
In an opinion joined by two other justices, Justice Bruce Zager said Watkins didn’t meet the state standard for removal from elected office based on willful misconduct or maladministration in office. The alleged conduct didn’t amount to a criminal law violation, and the district court had used the wrong standard to determine sexual harassment, Zager said.
“While not excusing Watkins’s egregious conduct,” the opinion said, “the record does not establish that Watkins was guilty of grave misconduct, demonstrated flagrant incompetence, or was otherwise unfit to perform his duties as county attorney.”
Nor did the record show that Watkins acted with bad or evil purpose, though his conduct was “voluntary, thoughtless, and offensive,” Zager said.
In a special concurrence, Justice Brent Appel said he didn’t join Zager’s opinion and didn’t join the dissent. He agreed, however, that Watkins’ behavior didn’t meet the state’s “extraordinarily demanding standard” for removal. “This case should be a model for county attorneys of how not to conduct themselves in office,” Appel said.
Justice Mark Cady was one of the dissenters. “Sexual harassment will not end until it is seen as serious enough to end,” he wrote.
