IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA

No. 22–0468

Submitted January 19, 2023—Filed February 24, 2023

CITY OF AMES,

Appellant,

vs.

IOWA PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BOARD,

Appellee,

and

INTERNATIONAL UNION OF OPERATING ENGINEERS, LOCAL 234,

Intervenor-Appellee

and

AFSCME Iowa Council 61,

Intervenor.

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Scott D. Rosenberg, 

Judge.

A city appeals the district court judgment affirming an agency ruling on 

the bargaining rights of nontransit employees. REVERSED AND REMANDED.

Waterman, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices 

joined.

Jason M. Craig (argued) and Aaron J. Hilligas of Ahlers & Cooney, P.C., 

Des Moines, for appellant.
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Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and David Ranscht (argued) and 

Benjamin J. Flickinger (until withdrawal), Assistant Attorneys General, and

Diana S. Machir (until withdrawal), Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, 

Des Moines, for appellee.

Jay M. Smith (argued) of Smith & McElwain Law Office, Sioux City, for 

intervenor-appellee International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 234.
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WATERMAN, Justice. 

In this appeal, we must decide whether statutes that protect the pre-2017

collective bargaining rights of public transit employees extend to nontransit

employees in the same bargaining unit. Federal funding is conditioned upon 

labor protections for transit workers. The Iowa legislature amended Iowa Code 

chapter 20 in 2017 to restrict the bargaining rights of public employees

generally. Two provisions, Iowa Code section 20.27 and section 20.32 (2018),

have been enacted to help avoid loss of federal transit funding. The City of Ames

sought guidance whether section 20.32 requires broader bargaining rights for

nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit, as urged by the union 

representing the city employees. The parties agree the City will provide its transit 

employees with the bargaining rights they enjoyed before the 2017 amendments 

by operation of Iowa Code section 20.27. The Iowa Public Employee Relations 

Board (PERB) ruled that broader bargaining rights must be extended under 

section 20.32 to the nontransit employees in a bargaining unit consisting of at 

least thirty percent transit employees. The district court affirmed that 

determination. We retained the City’s appeal.

On our review, we hold that PERB and the district court misinterpreted 

Iowa Code section 20.32 by extending broader bargaining rights to nontransit 

employees. In our view, the plain meaning of section 20.32 protects only transit 

employees, not nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit. The parties 

can accommodate intraunit differences in bargaining rights. We reverse the 
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conflicting interpretation by the district court and remand the case for further 

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

The City of Ames provides public transportation through “CyRide” bus

services operated by city transit employees. The City’s transit employees are 

represented by the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). Their

bargaining unit is mixed, including both transit and nontransit employees. 

Transit employees make up over thirty percent of the bargaining unit. The City 

receives federal funding for its public transportation.

The federal funding comes with strings attached. Congress enacted the 

Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 (UMTA) to “provide funding to support 

public transportation” and to “promote the development of the public 

transportation workforce.” 49 U.S.C. § 5301(b)(1), (8). Congress “was aware of 

the increasingly precarious financial condition of a number of private 

transportation companies across the country, and it feared that communities 

might be left without adequate mass transportation.” Jackson Transit Auth. v. 

Loc. Div. 1285, Amalgamated Transit Union, 457 U.S. 15, 17 (1982). “At the same 

time, however, Congress was aware that public ownership might threaten

existing collective-bargaining rights of unionized transit workers employed by 

private companies” that are acquired by local governments in states that forbade 

collective bargaining by government employees. Id. “To prevent federal funds 

from being used to destroy the collective-bargaining rights of organized workers, 

Congress included § 13(c) in the Act.” Id.
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Section 13(c) of the UMTA requires recipients of federal transit funds to 

protect the collective bargaining rights of public transit employees. 49 U.S.C. 

§ 5333(b). Termed “section 13(c) agreements,” public employers must certify they 

provide their transit employees certain minimum rights. Failure to meet the 

minimum standards can result in the loss of federal funds. 

At the state level, the Iowa Public Employee Relations Act (PERA), enacted 

in 1974 and codified in chapter 20, originally guaranteed a broad range of 

collective bargaining subjects for public employees. See 1974 Iowa Acts ch. 1095 

(codified at Iowa Code ch. 20 (1975)). But in 2017, the General Assembly enacted

House File 291, which amended PERA to restrict the collective bargaining rights 

of public employees generally. 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 2, §§ 1–18 (codified in 

scattered sections of Iowa Code ch. 20 (2018)). “The amendments ended payroll 

deductions for union dues and narrowed the scope of mandatory collective 

bargaining topics for bargaining units comprised of less than thirty percent 

‘public safety employees.’ ”

1 AFSCME Iowa Council 61 v. State, 928 N.W.2d 21, 

1Section 20.3(11) defines “Public safety employee” as follows:

a. A sheriff’s regular deputy.

b. A marshal or police officer of a city, township, or special-purpose district 

or authority who is a member of a paid police department.

c. A member, except a non-peace officer member, of the division of state 

patrol, narcotics enforcement, state fire marshal, or criminal investigation, 

including but not limited to a gaming enforcement officer, who has been duly 

appointed by the department of public safety in accordance with section 80.15.

d. A conservation officer or park ranger as authorized by section 456A.13.

e. A permanent or full-time fire fighter of a city, township, or 

special-purpose district or authority who is a member of a paid fire department.

f. A peace officer designated by the department of transportation under 

section 321.477 who is subject to mandated law enforcement training.
6

26 (Iowa 2019). Even for units with more than thirty percent public safety 

employees, the 2017 amendments eliminated payroll deductions for dues and 

imposed a retention and recertification election to be held one year before the 

expiration of the collective bargaining agreement. See 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 2, §§ 9 

(codified at Iowa Code § 20.15(2)(a) (2018)), 22 (codified at Iowa Code § 70A.19

(2018)). The United States Department of Labor (DOL) relied on those provisions 

to determine that extending the rights of public safety employees to transit 

workers was insufficient to preserve federal transit funding.

Even after the 2017 amendments, when a bargaining unit is comprised of 

at least thirty percent public safety employees, its employees still have the right 

to bargain with the public employer on a wide range of matters:

wages, hours, vacations, insurance, holidays, leaves of absence, 

shift differentials, overtime compensation, supplemental pay, 

seniority, transfer procedures, job classifications, health and safety 

matters, evaluation procedures, procedures for staff reduction, 

in-service training, grievance procedures for resolving any questions 

arising under the agreement, and other matters mutually agreed 

upon.

Iowa Code § 20.9(1). When a bargaining unit is comprised of less than thirty 

percent public safety employees, however, the unit has a much narrower scope 

of collective bargaining rights. Employees in these bargaining units have the 

right to bargain only as to “base wages and other matters mutually agreed 

upon.”2 Id.

Iowa Code § 20.3(11).

2We upheld the constitutionality of the 2017 amendments and rejected claims challenging 

the greater restrictions on the bargaining rights of public employees in bargaining units 

comprised of less than thirty percent public safety employees. See AFSCME Iowa Council 61, 928 

N.W.2d at 31, 39–40 (upholding the two-class bargaining scheme under rational basis review);
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The City, as a recipient of federal transit funds, is subject to both federal 

law and Iowa law, including the amendments of House File 291. The DOL notified 

the City that narrowing the bargaining rights of its transit employees could 

jeopardize its receipt of federal funds.

The General Assembly had anticipated this issue when it enacted PERA. 

It provided at that time that Iowa law would be considered inoperative to the 

extent it jeopardizes the receipt of federal funds. See 1974 Iowa Acts ch. 1095, 

§ 28 (codified at Iowa Code § 20.27 (1975)). The City agreed to use this escape 

hatch provided by section 20.27; the 2017 amendments would be inoperative

and its transit employees would have the full bargaining rights they enjoyed

before the 2017 amendments. See Iowa Code § 20.27 (“If any provision of this 

chapter jeopardizes the receipt by the state or any of its political subdivisions of 

any federal grant-in-aid funds or other federal allotment of money, the provisions 

of this chapter shall, insofar as the fund is jeopardized, be deemed to be 

inoperative.”). This satisfied the DOL, which certified the City’s continued receipt 

of federal transit funding based on the City’s reliance on section 20.27.

The City and the IUOE disagreed, however, whether Iowa Code 

section 20.32 provides broader bargaining rights for nontransit employees in the 

same bargaining unit. Section 20.32 is triggered if the director of the Iowa 

Department of Transportation (IDOT) determines, “upon written confirmation 

from the [DOL]” that a public employer would otherwise “lose federal funding.” 

see also Iowa State Educ. Ass’n v. State, 928 N.W.2d 11, 18–19 (Iowa 2019) (upholding the payroll 

deduction prohibition against an equal protection challenge).
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See Iowa Code § 20.32. The director of the IDOT, Mark Lowe, determined that 

section 20.32 was inapplicable because the DOL provided no such written 

confirmation and the City had secured federal funding through section 20.27.

The City petitioned PERB for a declaratory order clarifying whether 

section 20.32 extends broader bargaining rights to nontransit employees in the 

same bargaining unit. PERB determined that section 20.32 required the City to 

provide nontransit workers with the same bargaining rights as public safety 

employees when the bargaining unit consists of at least thirty percent transit 

employees.

The City filed a petition for judicial review. See Iowa Code § 17A.19(10)(c). 

It argued PERB erred in concluding Iowa Code section 20.32 applies to 

nontransit employees. The district court denied the City’s petition, concluding 

PERB correctly determined the substantive bargaining rights and interpreted 

chapter 20 in a reasonable manner. The City appealed; we retained the case.

II. Standard of Review.

This appeal turns on the interpretation of Iowa Code section 20.32. We 

review interpretations of Iowa Code chapter 20 for correction of errors at law

without deference to PERB’s interpretation. See United Elec., Radio & Mach. 

Workers of Am. v. Iowa Pub. Emp. Rels. Bd., 928 N.W.2d 101, 108 (Iowa 2019) 

(noting the 2017 amendments to chapter 20 removed PERB’s interpretive 

authority).
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III. Analysis.

The fighting issue is whether statutory protections for the bargaining 

rights of transit workers to secure federal transit funding also extend to 

nontransit workers in the same bargaining unit. PERB, affirmed by the district 

court, interpreted Iowa Code section 20.32 to provide broader bargaining rights 

for nontransit employees in a bargaining unit with at least thirty percent transit 

employees. The IUOE argues that interpretation is correct. As noted, PERB’s 

interpretation is owed no deference. United Elec., Radio & Mach. Workers of Am., 

928 N.W.2d at 108. The City argues section 20.32 does not broaden the 

bargaining rights of nontransit employees. We agree with the City based on the 

plain meaning of section 20.32.

We begin with the statutory text. Borst Bros. Constr. v. Fin. of Am. Com., 

LLC, 975 N.W.2d 690, 699 (Iowa 2022). Iowa Code section 20.27 provides:

If any provision of this chapter jeopardizes the receipt by the 

state or any of its political subdivisions of any federal grant-in-aid 

funds or other federal allotment of money, the provisions of this 

chapter shall, insofar as the fund is jeopardized, be deemed to be 

inoperative.

As noted, the City has secured its federal transit funding by relying on 

section 20.27 to maintain the same collective bargaining rights for its transit 

employees as they enjoyed before the 2017 amendments. This effectuates the 

legislative goal of avoiding a loss of federal funding and satisfies the 

congressional goal of protecting the bargaining rights of public transit workers.
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But the parties’ dispute did not end there. PERB went on to extend broader 

bargaining rights to the City’s nontransit employees pursuant to section 20.32, 

which provides:

All provisions of this chapter applicable to employees 

described in section 20.3, subsection 11 [public safety employees],

shall be applicable on the same terms and to the same degree to any 

transit employee if it is determined by the director of the department 

of transportation, upon written confirmation from the United States 

department of labor, that a public employer would lose federal 

funding under 49 U.S.C. §5333(b) if the transit employee is not 

covered under certain collective bargaining rights.

Id. § 20.32 (emphasis added). In our view, section 20.32 protects only “transit 

employees,” not nontransit employees. PERB’s contrary interpretation is simply 

wrong, and we must reverse the district court ruling on that interpretation. A 

bus driver is a transit employee covered under 49 U.S.C. § 5333(b). Custodians, 

meter readers, and plumbing inspectors are not. 

We conclude the text of section 20.32 is unambiguous, and we need not 

resort to any tools or canons of statutory construction. See State v. Zacarias, 958 

N.W.2d 573, 581 (Iowa 2021). The title of section 20.32 is “Transit employees —

applicability.” We take our cue to apply the text that follows to transit employees. 

The text itself confirms this: the key phrase, repeated twice, is to any “transit 

employee.” Iowa Code § 20.32. Conspicuously lacking are any extenders or 

modifiers of “bargaining unit” or similar language that would suggest a mixed 

group of occupations. Moreover, the text references 49 U.S.C. § 5333(b), which 

guarantees the minimum bargaining rights of transit employees under federal 

law. The scope of section 20.32 is limited to determining the substantive 

bargaining rights of transit employees.
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PERB and the IUOE took a tortuous path to extend section 20.32 to 

nontransit employees. They noted the statute extends the rights of public safety 

workers (as defined in section 20.3(11)) to transit employees as necessary to 

avoid the loss of federal transit funding. Next, they jumped to section 20.9, which 

provides broader bargaining rights to all employees in a bargaining unit 

comprised of at least thirty percent public safety employees. The legislature, 

however, did not cross-reference section 20.9 in section 20.32. And PERB’s 

interpretation of section 20.32 fails to broaden the bargaining rights of any 

transit employees in a bargaining unit lacking thirty percent transit employees.

Extending broader bargaining rights to nontransit employees has nothing 

to do with the purpose of section 20.32: protection of federal funding. Yet that 

extension of broader bargaining rights to nontransit employees would be flatly 

at odds with the thrust of the 2017 amendments that restricted the bargaining 

rights of most public employees. See AFSCME Iowa Council 61, 928 N.W.2d at 

28–30 (reviewing restrictions on collective bargaining rights imposed by the 2017 

amendments).3

PERB’s interpretation is not supported by reading the related provisions 

together. The City’s bargaining unit at issue represented by the IUOE has thirty

percent transit employees, not thirty percent public safety employees. PERB’s 

interpretation would effectively rewrite section 20.9 to read “thirty percent of 

3We upheld the constitutionality of those restrictions under rational basis review and 

rejected equal protection challenges to the thirty percent public safety employee threshold. 

AFSCME Iowa Council 61, 928 N.W.2d at 39–40. Nothing in that opinion extends broader 

bargaining rights to nontransit workers in a unit lacking thirty percent public safety employees.
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members who are public safety employees or transit employees.” It is not our role 

to rewrite legislation. The legislature simply did not extend broader bargaining 

rights to all employees in bargaining units with thirty percent transit employees.

Rather, it expressly limited the benefits of section 20.32 to transit employees.

We are not persuaded that our interpretation leads to practical problems 

administering varying bargaining rights within the same unit. The parties 

acknowledge that some intraunit bargaining disparity is unavoidable. Indeed, 

under PERB’s interpretation, transit employees would still be exempted from the 

recertification election and dues checkoff provisions by operation of 

section 20.27, even though those provisions apply to public safety employees. 

Nor are we convinced that section 20.32 is impermissibly rendered superfluous 

when, as here, it is bypassed in favor of section 20.27 because the DOL 

determined the rights of public safety employees are insufficient to preserve 

federal funding. See State v. Thompson, 954 N.W.2d 402, 417–18 (Iowa 2021) 

(concluding “belt-and-suspenders” canon trumped surplusage canon).

Plain language prevails. Transit workers are not nontransit workers, 

whether section 20.32 is read in isolation or together with related provisions. We 

hold that the City is not required to provide broader bargaining rights to 

nontransit employees, regardless of whether the bargaining unit has thirty 

percent transit employees.
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IV. Disposition.

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the district court’s decision affirming 

PERB’s erroneous interpretation of Iowa Code section 20.32. We remand the case 

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.