Background
Police found three baggies of marijuana and a loaded handgun in Breosha Kelley’s vehicle. The State charged her under Iowa Code section 724.8B (2024), which makes carrying a firearm while unlawfully possessing a controlled substance a serious misdemeanor.
Kelley moved to dismiss, arguing that section 724.8B violated the Second Amendment as applied to her conduct. While the motion was pending, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected a nearly identical challenge in State v. Woods. The Woods plurality concluded that there is no constitutional right to carry a pistol together with illegal drugs, while Justice Oxley’s separate concurrence reached the same result on different grounds. The district court found Woods indistinguishable, denied Kelley’s motion, and accepted her conditional guilty plea preserving the issue for appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Iowa Court of Appeals held that review of Kelley’s conditional guilty plea was in the interest of justice but rejected her constitutional claim on the merits. Woods remained binding Iowa precedent, and the court found no material distinction between Kelley’s as-applied challenge and the challenge resolved there.
The court also concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Hemani did not undermine Woods. Hemani narrowly invalidated a federal status-based prohibition as applied to a person who used marijuana several times a week, whereas Iowa Code section 724.8B regulates the conduct of carrying a firearm while unlawfully possessing a controlled substance. Because Kelley had no Second Amendment right to engage in that combined conduct, the court affirmed her conviction.
Key Takeaways
- State v. Woods controls Second Amendment challenges to Iowa Code section 724.8B involving a firearm carried together with illegally possessed drugs.
- Woods reached its controlling result through a plurality opinion and Justice Oxley’s concurrence on separate grounds, not through a single majority rationale.
- Hemani addressed a status-based federal firearm restriction and did not decide the constitutionality of conduct-based restrictions such as section 724.8B.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms that, in Iowa, an as-applied Second Amendment challenge to section 724.8B cannot succeed on facts materially indistinguishable from Woods. It also emphasizes the distinction between laws disarming people based on drug-user status and laws prohibiting the contemporaneous conduct of carrying a firearm while illegally possessing drugs.