Gazette Daily News Briefing, September 30
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, September 30.
Pleasant, not quite as brisk, fall weather has returned, starting Friday and heading into next week. According to the National Weather Service it will be sunny in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday with a high near 71 degrees. On Friday night it will be mostly clear, with a low of around 45 degrees. A light wind will become even calmer as the day goes on.
A Marion resident is suing the Linn-Mar Community School District, saying she was banned from school board meetings for the next 12 months because she disrupted the August school board meeting.
Amanda Pierce Snyder, who lives in the Linn-Mar district, was removed from the Aug. 29 school board meeting after she interrupted board members’ discussion and was asked to stop speaking by the board president, Britannia Morey.
When Snyder didn’t stop speaking, Morey asked the Marion police officer at the meeting to remove Snyder from the room.
The lawsuit claims that Snyder then received a letter from the school board saying she was banned from attending in-person school board meetings for the next 12 months.
The lawsuit asks the court to rule that banning Snyder from board meetings is illegal and cannot be enforced. It seeks to have the district penalized for violating Iowa law and fined $1,000 to $2,500 per meeting Snyder cannot attend. It seeks the removal of Morey from the president’s role if she again violates Iowa Code during her term and asks that the district pay Snyder’s attorney fees and court costs.
Snyder’s lawyer is Alan Ostergren, who also is suing the district over its transgender policy, representing the Parents Defending Education organization.
A firefighter and civilian were injured Thursday in a house fire in Cedar Rapids.
Firefighters were called to 2120 Ninth St. SW at 12:27 p.m. Thursday and immediately began fire suppression efforts on the front of the home, where there was visible smoke and flames.
Firefighters also began treating a man suffering from burns and wounds sustained in the fire. The man was in the front yard of the house when fire crews arrived.
While fighting the fire inside the house, one firefighter was injured when ceiling materials gave way and fell on him.
The civilian man and the firefighter were both taken to a hospital. The injuries to the firefighter are minor, and the extent of the injuries to the other man are not known, according to the news release.
Iowa and five other Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration in an effort to halt its plan to forgive student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans, accusing it of overstepping its executive powers.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, it’s at least the second legal challenge this week to the sweeping proposal laid out by President Joe Biden in late August, when he said his administration would cancel up to $20,000 in education debt for eligible borrowers. In Iowa, as many as 450,000 people could be affected by the news debt forgiveness, according to Iowa College Aid, the state’s student financial aid agency.
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in a federal court in Missouri, the Republican states argue the plan is not tailored to address the effects of the pandemic on federal student loan borrowers as is required by the 2003 federal law that the administration is using as legal justification.
In a statement, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds argued the wide-scale debt relief is unfair to hard-working Americans to have their tax dollars used to forgive student loan debt of the “well-off who can afford to pay their own loans.”
