2010 Iowa judicial retention elections

Three of the seven justices of the Iowa Supreme Court — Marsha K. Ternus, Michael J. Streit, and David L. Baker — faced judicial retention elections on November 2, 2010. As part of merit selection reforms in 1962, Iowa Supreme Court judges face retention elections every eight years. Prior to 2010, retention elections were usually nonpartisan, and Supreme Court justices had been retained by large margins.

Following the Varnum v. Brien decision of 2009, a unanimous Supreme Court ruling which struck down prohibitions on same-sex marriage, a campaign, led primarily by Bob Vander Plaats, was launched advocating against judicial retention. The anti-retention campaign was mainly funded by out-of-state donors. The three justices did not actively campaign for re-election. All three Supreme Court justices were unseated in the vote. This was the first time Supreme Court justices had been unseated in Iowa by retention election, although four lower-court justices had been previously removed in the same manner.

Although Republican Governor Terry Branstad swore in replacement justices in June 2011, efforts to change the court's makeup further in response to Varnum, or to otherwise restrict same-sex marriage by enshrining a ban in the state constitution, were unsuccessful. A 2012 retention vote against David Wiggins, who ruled on Varnum, also failed, and the U.S. Supreme Court would decide Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, establishing marriage equality nationwide on similar grounds to Varnum.