James Edward Gritzner
How Judge Gritzner decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Gritzner has decided two high-profile First Amendment challenges to Iowa speech restrictions in favor of the speakers: he struck down Iowa's 'ag-gag' agricultural-production-facility-fraud statute on summary judgment (ALDF v. Reynolds) and allowed the ISU NORML student-chapter viewpoint-discrimination claims to proceed past a motion to dismiss and partly to summary judgment (Gerlich v. Leath). Practical lesson for counsel: well-developed First Amendment records on content/viewpoint discrimination have fared well before him. NOTE: this is grounded in signed docket-entry outcomes, not in verbatim reasoning passages (full opinion text not retrieved this session); deepen before relying on the 'why'.
“ORDER granting 49 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; denying 57 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. The remaining due process claim in Count III is dismissed... Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/9/2019.”
Motion outcomes
Counted from classified signed orders only. Percentages are shown only where the sample is large enough to be meaningful; smaller samples are reported as raw counts.
| Summary judgment N = 5 |
Granted: 2Granted in part: 2Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 1 |
Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Permanent injunction N = 1 |
Granted: 1 | counts only |
A "1 of 1" is one ruling, not a tendency. Treat small samples as illustrative, not predictive.
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“ORDER granting 49 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; denying 57 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. The remaining due process claim in Count III is dismissed... Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/9/2019.”
“ORDER granting 49 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; denying 57 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. The remaining due process claim in Count III is dismissed... Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/9/2019.”
“ORDER granting 81 Motion for Permanent Injunction and Entry of Judgment. See order for particulars. Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 2/14/2019.”
“ORDER denying 9 Motion to Dismiss. See order for particulars. Signed by Chief Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/6/2015.”
“ORDER granting in part and denying in part 47 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; granting in part and denying in part 48 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. See order for all particulars. Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/22/2016.”
“ORDER granting in part and denying in part 47 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; granting in part and denying in part 48 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. See order for all particulars. Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/22/2016.”
“Lakeside appealed from the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Producers on Lakeside's state-law claim for fraudulent misrepresentation”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 281 days (N = 8).
Median motion-to-ruling time: 158 days (N = 6).
Sample of ~21 dockets that docket lists with Gritzner as assigned judge, filed 2004-2022, civil + a few prisoner/habeas/criminal. UNVERIFIED at the signer level (the assigned_judge string is unreliable on this court; some were reassigned or signed by other judges), so treat this as a rough caseload shape, not a census. Nature-of-suit mix below is from the case-level metadata.