# Varnum v. Brien **763 N.W.2d 862 (Iowa 2009).** A unanimous decision of the Iowa Supreme Court holding that the state's statutory bar on same-sex marriage violated the equal-protection guarantee of the **Iowa Constitution**. Iowa became the third state, and the first in the Midwest, to recognize same-sex marriage. ## Why it appears in the judicial-selection material *Varnum* is the proximate cause of the only mass removal of state supreme court justices in modern American history. In the November 2010 retention elections, three of the seven justices who joined the opinion — including the chief justice — were voted off the court, each with roughly 45 percent "yes." The ouster campaign was financed largely from outside Iowa and cost a fraction of a competitive legislative race; the justices' defense raised a little over $350,000. A fourth justice from the same opinion was targeted by the same campaign in 2012 and **survived** with about 54 percent. The asymmetry between those two results — same ruling, same funders, same mechanism, opposite outcomes two years apart — is the evidence that a retention election tracks the surrounding political weather rather than any assessment of the judge. See [[State Judicial Selection Crosswalk]]. ## See also - [[State Judicial Selection Crosswalk]] - [[Judicial Independence]] - [[National Organization for Marriage]] - [[American Family Association]]