In 2021, the Iowa Supreme Court held that a police search of garbage left at curbside for pickup was unconstitutional under the Iowa Constitution’s search and seizure clause. A local ordinance made scavenging through someone’s garbage illegal, which to the court meant that the garbage owner possessed a government-recognized property right in the trash, and the police search was similarly illegal.
In Iowa v. Amble, No. 23-2114 (June 13, 2025), the Iowa Supreme Court concluded that that was then, this is now. In the aftermath of the 2021 case, the Iowa Legislature adopted a statute which deemed curbside garbage to be abandoned property. The statute also forbade municipalities from enacting ordinances or adopting regulations which would create a “reasonable expectation of privacy in garbage placed outside of the person’s residence for waste collection in a publicly accessible area.”
Flash forward to today: Des Moines police searched garbage bags which a resident suspected of drug dealing had placed on the curb. The trial court granted the defendants’ suppression motion, after which the Iowa Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Reversed.
This is abandoned property, because the state said so. Our earlier case held that such searches were illegal without a warrant because a local ordinance deemed garbage to be property “not yet abandoned.”
Such ordinances effectively have now been preempted by Iowa Code section 808.16(3), which provides, “Garbage placed outside of a person’s residence for waste collection in a publicly accessible area shall be deemed abandoned property . . . .” We hold that this specific provision in section 808.16(3) is constitutional facially and as applied in this case and lawfully authorized the trash pulls at issue. We therefore reverse the district court’s ruling and remand the case for further proceedings.
Slip op. at 3.
The property right recognized in the earlier case, the court concluded, was based “on positive law, specifically a local antiscavenging ordinance.” Slip op. at 7. This means “the changes in state or local property law governing trash disposal could, in turn, allow constitutional trash pulls by police.” Slip op. at 8. The legislature is free to “conclusively declar[e] that Iowans have abandoned any ownership rights in trash they placed in garbage cans for collection outside their home’s curtilage in publicly accessible places.” Slip op. at 11.
What the government recognizes, it may un-recognize:
As the foregoing discussions in Wright demonstrate, positive law, such as a local ordinance, can define private property rights and thereby affect the constitutional analysis of whether a person’s papers and effects have been abandoned or not. And so, consistent with Wright, a change in the positive law can make a difference. That is where the subsequent enactment of Iowa Code section 808.16(3) comes in. No longer may local antiscavenging ordinances support a finding that garbage placed outside defendants’ property for collection is not yet abandoned. No longer may defendants claim that an officer conducting a trash pull has committed a trespass. And no longer may defendants claim a reasonable expectation of privacy in discarded trash. Section 808.16(3) trumps any inconsistent local ordinance as a matter of state property law. See Seymour, 755 N.W.2d at 538–39. Section 808.16(3) establishes that such garbage (including any papers or effects tossed out with it) has been abandoned as a matter of law. Defendants cannot claim a constitutional violation when police search abandoned property.
Slip op. at 12-13.
One Justice dissented, concluding that the 2021 case “stood for something more consequential or enduring,” and “it is for the court, not the legislature, to determine whether conduct is constitutional.” This question of what is “property” is thus a judicial determination:
The legislature could not, for instance, end-run the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution’s protection against the taking of private property without just compensation by passing a law that says anytime a government entity wants to take private land to build a road, that land “shall not be deemed private property” under the law and thus no compensation for the taking is required. Likewise, the legislature could not end-run the constitutional right to keep and bear arms by passing a statute saying that rifles are not “arms” and thus a statutory restriction on owning a rifle does not implicate article I, section 1A of the Iowa Constitution.
Just as the determination about what constitutes “property” or “arms” under the Fifth Amendment and section 1A are questions of constitutional dimension reserved for the court, so too is whether property constitutes the defendants’ (“their”) effects under article I, section 8. Section 808.16’s assertion about abandonment does not, and cannot, control our court’s interpretation and application of the meaning of “their effects” in this case.
If the legislature can alter constitutional protections simply by passing a statute negating a property interest that then mandates a particular constitutional application, the constitution is no longer “superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means.”
Slip op. at 20-21 (McDermott, J., dissenting) (citations omitted).
Iowa v. Amble, No. 23-2114 (Iowa June 13, 2025)