By Dr. Rachel S. Silverman
In 2017, James Mathias was placing flyers on cars in a high school parking lot during a football game when an off-duty police officer working event security noticed Mathias was carrying a firearm in his waistband. Although Mathias had a valid permit to carry the gun, Iowa law prohibits firearms on school grounds. Initially, the officer instructed Mathias to leave the premises. After consulting with the county attorney, however, the State charged Mathias with carrying a firearm on school grounds, a felony under Iowa law.
In the initial case, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that school-owned athletic facilities, including parking lots, can qualify as “school grounds,” even if they are not physically connected to classroom buildings. As a result, school-owned sports venues may be treated as school grounds under Iowa law, and firearm restrictions at school sporting events may be enforced even against individuals legally permitted to carry firearms.
Mathias later filed an application for postconviction relief, arguing his attorney provided ineffective assistance and the firearm prohibition violated his constitutional right to bear arms. The Iowa Court of Appeals, however, did not rule on whether the firearm statute itself was constitutional. Instead, the court focused on a procedural issue known as “error preservation.” Error preservation requires that legal arguments be raised properly and at the appropriate time in the lower court.
Although Mathias directly challenged the constitutionality of the firearm statute in the lower court, he reframed the issue on appeal by arguing that his attorney was ineffective for failing to raise the constitutional claim earlier. Since the issue was not presented to the lower court in that manner, the Court of Appeals concluded that there was no ruling for it to review.
The Court of Appeals therefore affirmed the lower court’s decision, explaining “a party cannot sing a song to us that was not first sung in trial court.”
More specifically, it wrote that in Mathias’s PCR trial, “he separated his gun-rights claim from his allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel. In its ruling, the district court also addressed that constitutional challenge as a freestanding claim. But in this appeal, Mathias couches the challenge as ineffective assistance of counsel. Because this is not how Mathias presented the issue at trial nor how the district court decided it, there is no ineffective-assistance ruling regarding his gun-rights claim to review.”
James Lee Mathias v State of Iowa; Ct. App. Iowa; No. 24-1673; 12/3/25
