State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Breosha Keairr Kelley, Defendant–Appellant. (2026)

Breosha Kelley was charged with carrying a firearm while unlawfully possessing a controlled substance—a serious misdemeanor under Iowa Code section 724.8B (2024)—after police found three baggies of marijuana and a loaded handgun in her vehicle. In February 2025, she moved to dismiss, arguing section 724.8B violated the Second Amendment as applied to the facts of her case.

While Kelley's motion was pending, a majority of our supreme court rejected a near-identical challenge to the same statute. See State v. Woods, 23 N.W.3d 258, 277 (Iowa 2025) (plurality opinion) (holding “there is no federal or state constitutional right to carry a pistol in the same backpack with one's illegal drugs”); id. at 286 (Oxley, J., concurring) (finding on separate grounds that “carrying [a] readily accessible, loaded firearm out into public in the same backpack as ․ illegal drugs” is not constitutionally protected). Finding Woods indistinguishable, the district court rejected Kelley's as-applied challenge. She later entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving her right to appeal the court's ruling. We find appellate review is in the interest of justice.¹ See Iowa Code § 814.6(3); State v. McClain, 20 N.W.3d 488, 495 (Iowa 2025). But while we have jurisdiction to consider Kelley's claim, it does not get far on the merits.

When Kelley briefed this appeal, a petition for writ of certiorari was pending in Woods, and the United States Supreme Court had agreed to take up a Second Amendment challenge to a federal statute criminalizing firearm possession by controlled-substance users. See United States v. Hemani, 608 U.S. 772 (2026). Citing these developments, Kelley argued that Woods was wrongly decided, and she asked for her appeal to be stayed until after the Supreme Court proved her right.²

But neither Hemani nor Woods turned out as Kelley hoped. In June 2026, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Hemani, which declared 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) unconstitutional as applied to a defendant who was disarmed because he “use[d] marijuana a few times a week.” 608 U.S. at 794. It found that status-based prohibition—which was unconcerned with the extent, effect, or danger of the defendant's drug use—did not fit within the historical analogue advanced by the government. See id. at 794–95. The Court described its holding as “a narrow one.” Id. at 794. It did not address the constitutionality of conduct-based firearm prohibitions like Iowa Code section 724.8B. See Woods, 23 N.W.3d at 284 (Oxley, J., concurring) (“As the plurality rightly recognizes, section 724.8B is a conduct-based restriction, not a status-based one.”). And just eleven days after Hemani, it denied certiorari in Woods. See Woods v. Iowa, 146 S.Ct. 2795 (2026).

Kelley's bet on a watershed shift in Second Amendment law has come up short. Woods remains binding precedent in Iowa. And like the district court, we find no material difference between Kelley's as-applied challenge and the claim lodged in that case. Because Kelley has no Second Amendment right to “carry a firearm while also in the illegal possession of a controlled substance,” Woods, 23 N.W. 3d at 274, we affirm her conviction under Iowa Code section 724.8B.

AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

1.   We reject the State's argument that Kelley raised her as-applied challenge for the first time on appeal. Kelley's motion to dismiss and the district court's ruling both characterize her claim in the same way she presents it here.

2.   Our supreme court denied Kelley's motion and directed her to file a brief.

Opinion by Badding, J.