Divided Iowa Supreme Court upholds gun restrictions

A divided Iowa Supreme Court last week upheld two laws restricting firearm access, one related to domestic violence protective orders and the other to possession of illegal drugs while carrying a weapon.

Both decisions were narrowly decided by 4-3 majorities of the court.

In its final decisions of the 2024-25 term, the Iowa Supreme Court on Friday denied a challenge to a law that makes it a crime to possess firearms while subject to a domestic violence protective order, and another that forbids carrying a dangerous weapon while possessing illegal drugs or committing a crime.

  Buy Photo

Dissenting justices argued the laws violated the defendants’ federal and state constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.

Jordan Cole, of Story County, appealed his conviction for possession of firearms while under a domestic violence protective order. Cole, in court filings, argues the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss because he has a fundamental right to possess firearms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Iowa Constitution that cannot be extinguished by the entry of a civil protective order.

According to court records, Cole consented to the entry of a one-year protective order in a domestic abuse case that expressly prohibited him from possessing firearms. Despite the prohibition, Cole pawned stolen firearms while the protective order was in effect. Prosecutors charged him with theft and violating the domestic abuse protective order.

State law prohibits individuals subject to a domestic abuse protective order or convicted of a domestic abuse offense from possessing, receiving, transporting or carrying a firearm or offensive weapon. Violations are considered a Class D felony.

The theft charge was dropped and Cole was convicted on two counts of violating that protective order and received probation.

Justice Thomas Waterman, joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Edward Mansfield and Christopher McDonald, delivered the opinion of the court. The justices found that Cole had waived his constitutional right to possess firearms when he agreed to the protective order.

  Buy Photo

The order warned: “Federal and state laws provide penalties for possessing, transporting, shipping or receiving and firearm or ammunition.”

“Cole was thereby warned,” Waterman wrote. “Cole did not object to entry of the consent order. Nor did Cole ask the district court to reconsider any term in the order or to vacate the consent order. Cole never appealed from the consent order, and he is not collaterally attacking the consent order in this criminal appeal.”

Justice David May, joined by Justices Dana Oxley and Matthew McDermott, argued in a dissenting opinion that even though Cole consented to the entry of a civil protective order, he should be allowed to challenge the state law criminalizing his possession of firearms.

  Buy Photo

While the U.S. Supreme Court has recently upheld the constitutionality of a federal law that bars anyone subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a gun (United States v. Rahimi), May argued such orders are only constitutional if there’s a finding that the person “represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of an intimate partner or child. However, since the judge in Cole's case made no such finding, May argues the protective order was invalid.

“If mere allegations were enough to justify the disarmament of a citizen, Rahimi’s requirements would be largely meaningless, as would the Second Amendment,” May wrote. “… Just because one person has requested a protective order against a second person, we cannot just assume that the second person is a violent abuser.”

In a concurring opinion, Christensen cited state and national statistics for domestic violence and argued that courts have consistently, and correctly, upheld orders such as the one against Cole, without an express judicial finding that they pose a credible threat, because they recognized the “well-documented dangerousness posed by domestic abuser having access to firearms.”

  Buy Photo

“Undermining the efficacy of firearm prohibitions in protective orders could intensify that threat by placing battered domestic partners and the professionals who work to protect them at greater risk,” Christensen wrote.

The court affirmed Cole’s conviction, but found the district court included an unlawful provision in this sentencing that states if his probation is ever revoked, his prison sentences shall be served consecutively. The justices remanded the case back to the lower court for a corrected sentencing order.

Court: No constitutional right to carry a firearm while ‘criming’

In a separate 4-3 decision, the Iowa Supreme Court determined an Iowa law that forbids carrying a firearm while simultaneously carrying controlled substances and committing an indictable offense it constitutional.

This time McDonald wrote the plurality opinion, joined by Christensen and Mansfield. Oxley wrote a concurring opinion agreeing to uphold a Polk County man’s conviction under the law, but argued the plurality of the court used an overly broad legal analysis and that a narrower interpretation of the law was warranted.

McDermott and May each wrote dissents, joined by the other and Waterman.

Kevin Woods was found with marijuana and a loaded semiautomatic pistol in his backpack during a traffic stop. He was charged with and pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and carrying a dangerous weapon while carrying controlled substances and committing an indictable offense.

Woods moved to have the dangerous weapon charge dismissed on the grounds it violated his federal and state constitutional rights.

McDonald argued the U.S. Supreme Court has held the federal right conferred under the Second Amendment “is no unlimited,” and instead “is a limited right of responsible, law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms when engaged in lawful conduct.”

  Buy Photo

“There is no federal or state constitutional right to carry a firearm while criming,” McDonald wrote.

McDermott, in his dissent, contends Woods’ possession of a “personal-use quantity” of marijuana — a non-violent misdemeanor — is insufficient ”to justify abridging Woods’s right to hear arms.“

“The plurality’s failure to distinguish between dangerous and nondangerous activities leads it to uphold a firearm restriction that in this case has no anchor in our historical traditions,” he wrote.

McDonald argued federal courts have acknowledged that guns and drugs “are a dangerous combination” that “inherently increase the potential for violence.”

“There is no category or crime where the perpetrator’s possession of a pistol during the commission of crime makes the situation safer,” he wrote in his opinion. “The government thus has ‘a compelling interest in public safety and preventing crime through the uniform enforcement of gun control laws.’”

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com