Front shot of Iowa Capitol in Des Moines.
On May 19, 2025, the Iowa governor, Kim Richards, signed into law the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) which makes Iowa the 12th state to have done so. This gives Iowa an A-grade Anti-SLAPP law to protect the free speech and related rights of Iowa citizens. The full Iowa UPEPA may be found here. Reviewing the Iowa UPEPA, it seems to be a pretty clean enactment ― I could not easily spot any significant non-uniform provisions in my first cursory review of the new statute.
Prior to the adoption of the UPEPA, Iowa had no Anti-SLAPP law at all. This meant that Iowa citizens were exposed to having meritless lawsuits brought against them to silence their free speech rights, or retaliate against them for having done so, through the use of the litigation process itself. The UPEPA allows for an early dismissal of such cases and for an award of attorney’s fees to make the defendant in such a case whole.
Passage of uniform acts like the UPEPA do not happen on their own. To the contrary, a great deal of work is put into the legislative process by a number of folks, including the local state sponsors of the bill, the floor managers, various proponents of the legislation who submit written materials and testify before committees, and of course the legislators themselves. Behind the scenes, the enactment of the UPEPA in all the states so far has largely been because of the impetus provided by Kaitlin Wolff, the Legislative Program Director of the Uniform Law Commission, who has done yeoman’s work in getting the UPEPA passed, including testifying herself at hearings on the UPEPA, rounding up witnesses to testify before the various judicial committees, and putting the spurs to the local ULC legislative liaison to push the UPEPA to their legislators.
We on the UPEPA drafting committee may have given birth to this Anti-SLAPP law which is now bringing greater protections for free speech to literally millions, but it was Kaitlin Wolff who nurtured it to enactment and is overdue for recognition and kudos.
The UPEPA has proven to be a wonderful out-of-the-box tool for states like Iowa that did not have previously have any Anti-SLAPP legislation at all, as well as for states which had defective Anti-SLAPP laws which required a full replacement instead of merely an overhaul. As I recently wrote in my article, Free Speech Rights: Anti-SLAPP Laws Of The U.S. Ranked By Quality (March 26, 2025), less than one-third of the states have no Anti-SLAPP law at all and slightly less than one-fifth of the states have very poor Anti-SLAPP laws. But these numbers are now slowly decreasing due to the enactment of the UPEPA. It is entirely possible that before this decade ends, the states with no or poor Anti-SLAPP laws will be reduced to only a handful.
And that is a very good thing for free speech rights of all Americans.
Read the full article here