Materials in the Iowa City State Historical Society cannot be relocated until a legal dispute between the State of Iowa and local Iowa City petitioners is resolved, a judge ruled on April 26. 

The building on Iowa Avenue was shuttered in June 2025, which was met with public backlash and a legal battle. 

Following a ruling by a Johnson County judge in October 2025, a temporary injunction was ordered, preventing the removal of the historical materials in the library by the state until a final verdict on the case is made. The court also denied the state’s request to dismiss the Iowa State Historical Society case entirely.

However, a motion to dissolve the injunction was taken to the 6th Judicial Court, a state trial court with general jurisdiction over the Benton, Iowa, Johnson, Jones, Linn, and Tama counties. 

According to the case’s legal documents, the state argued the injunction should be dissolved, as it causes greater injury to them compared to the benefit it would offer to the plaintiffs, specifically pointing to the cost of maintaining the building as the source of injury. They asserted that the petitioners have not properly demonstrated a benefit to maintaining the building.

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The state also argued that the petitioners were in violation of State Code 17A.19(5).

“The filing of the petition for review does not itself stay execution or enforcement of any agency action,” the code states. “Unless precluded by law, the agency may grant a stay on appropriate terms or other temporary remedies during the pendency of judicial review.”

However, the judge ultimately ruled against the state, citing that no new evidence had been contributed to support their claims, upholding the preliminary injunction put into place last year that blocks the removal of these materials.

Mary Bennett, a former archivist and librarian at the University of Iowa, worked as a special collections coordinator at the Iowa City State Historical Society for 50 years. Much of her work involves assisting students in their research. She said she helped launch a petitioning campaign in order to protect the important educational institution.

“I had retired, but I found out about their plan to close it, and I realized they were actually breaking the law, because the code of Iowa says they have to maintain a facility in Iowa City,” Bennett said. “And so a couple of bureaucrats decided to close it, but they didn’t involve any stakeholders. They didn’t involve the public, the legislators, the people who made donations to the collection.”

Bennett’s petition to protect the facility has received over 8,275 signatures, with over 6,500 from Iowans.

On March 4, Iowa Senate Republicans voted to pass Senate File 2293, which would strike state law for Iowa City to maintain the State Historical Society, meaning all the building’s contents would be moved to the sole location in Des Moines.

In June 2025, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services closed the center, which has been met with public backlash since, with protestors mobilizing through petitions and marches. 

In October 2025, a group of Iowa City residents, including historians, archivists, professors, and donors, filed a lawsuit against the Iowa Department of Administrative Services. As a collective group of plaintiffs, they argued that closing the center violated the state’s historical obligations.

During a Board of Trustees meeting on June 26, 2025, the State Historical Society of Iowa revealed that only 40 percent of the Iowa City historical collection would be moved to the Des Moines location, leaving the future of the remaining 60 percent uncertain.

James Larew, a litigation lawyer working in Iowa City, has represented the personal and private interests of each individual plaintiff throughout the court proceedings. In an interview with The Daily Iowan, he said there were concerns not only with the materials being relocated, but also with how the fragile and expensive materials were being handled.

“To move the artifacts in unmarked trucks, largely by prison labor,” Larew said. “We have nothing against prisoners, of course, the idea was no acknowledgement of the seriousness of the task and no real clear plans for what they would do with the artifacts once they were moved to Des Moines.”

Larew added that the Des Moines facility may not be an adequate location for these expensive materials.

“Des Moines, the facility, has its own problems,” Larew said. “It’s been inadequately resourced in the last 20 years, and so it seemed like moving from one problem to a larger problem.”

Bennett said that she and other petitioners were happy with the outcome of the trial, allowing them to move forward as they look into additional court filings for June 19.

“They were basically coming back, as the judge said, for a second bite at the apple, or for a do-over, and the judge said no,” Bennett said. “The state was asking to have the injunction lifted and put a $250,000 bond on the head of the plaintiffs, which we could not have afforded, so it was a successful decision for us when the judge issued that ruling.”

This bond was another motion brought forth by the state. Typically, when a temporary bond is issued, the party that issued it posts a bond to financially protect the other side. However, because the state had not requested the bond in last year’s ruling, it was not granted; it was in this one.

Larew said that this ruling helps to maintain millions of dollars’ worth of historical materials, donated by generations of Iowans. He said that the final ruling in the case will likely be in August or September, and that the ruling will hopefully recognize the important educational and historical value of the facility.

“The next generation of Iowans, those who are living, breathing now and aware of this controversy, reestablish their ties to the facility, to the institution, based on what I hope will be an order of the court that requires the state of Iowa to follow the mandates of the Iowa code,” Larew said.