Iowa Bars a Cannabidiol Card From Justifying a Vehicle Search

The question most people are really asking is whether Iowa has copied the rule some legalization states wrote, that lawful cannabis conduct is not grounds for a search. Iowa has not, because Iowa has no adult-use legalization act to put it in. What Iowa has is the Medical Cannabidiol Act at chapter 124E, and one subsection of it does the work. Section 124E.12(9) provides that possession of a medical cannabidiol registration card, or an application for such a card, by a person entitled to possess or apply for one shall not constitute probable cause or reasonable suspicion, shall not be used to support a search of the person or property of that person, and shall not otherwise subject the person or property to inspection by any governmental agency.

Read the object of that sentence carefully, because it is narrower than it first sounds. The thing that cannot be used against you is the card or the application. The subsection says nothing about the medical cannabidiol itself, nothing about smell, and nothing about a container. Iowa's protection for the substance sits one subsection group earlier and is a different kind of protection: section 124E.12(4)(a) makes it an affirmative and complete defense to a prosecution for unlawful possession of marijuana under chapters 124 and 453B that the patient was diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition, used or possessed the medical cannabidiol under a health care practitioner's certification, and, for a patient eighteen or older, holds a valid registration card. A defense at trial is not a bar to a roadside search, and Iowa's legislature drew that line deliberately.

The rest of Iowa's statute book is silent in the places other states have written. Chapter 808, Iowa's search and seizure chapter, contains no use of the word consent anywhere in it. It authorizes warrants for property obtained in violation of law, property whose possession is unlawful, property used or possessed as a means of committing an offense, and any other property relevant and material as evidence, and then sets out application, issuance, execution and return procedure. Where Iowa's legislature has wanted to settle a search question it has done so one topic at a time: section 808.16 declares as public policy that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed outside a residence for collection in a publicly accessible area, and section 808.15 makes information obtained from an unmanned aerial vehicle inadmissible unless obtained under a search warrant or otherwise consistent with state and federal law. There is no comparable subsection on vehicles, on odor, or on consent.

There is also no Iowa counterpart to the consent-logging duties Texas and Illinois impose, and no pretextual-stop package: chapter 80, which governs the Iowa department of public safety, contains no racial profiling or pretext provision, and chapter 204, the Iowa hemp act, carries no probable-cause clause of any kind.

What Iowa does spell out is the officer's baseline authority, which needs no consent at all. Section 321.492(1) authorizes a peace officer to stop a vehicle to require exhibition of the driver's license, to serve a summons or memorandum of traffic violation, to inspect the condition of the vehicle, to inspect the vehicle with reference to size, weight, cargo, log book, bills of lading or other manifest of employment, tires, and safety equipment, or to inspect the registration certificate, the compensation certificate, travel order, or permit. Section 321.492(3)(a) lets peace officers within section 801.4(11) paragraphs a, b, c and h conduct spot inspections where they have reasonable grounds that equipment violations exist. Those are inspections of the vehicle, not searches of its contents, and the statute stops there.

12(9) creates a penalty or a complaint route of its own. It is a rule of evidence and of investigative authority, so it is enforced by a motion to suppress in the criminal case in the Iowa district court for the county where the search happened, and by the exclusion of anything found. 1(1)(b) carries a fine of $430 to $2,560 and up to a year in jail. 16(1) confirms that a person who knowingly or intentionally possesses or uses medical cannabidiol outside the chapter's requirements remains subject to the penalties in chapters 124 and 453B. 174 license violation.