An Iowa State University student has sued the City of Ames over CyRide's ban on firearms aboard its buses, despite holding a valid Iowa permit to carry. Natalie Gibson filed the lawsuit challenging CyRide's no-guns rule for riders, setting up a legal fight over the ban.
Gibson claims she carries a valid Iowa permit to carry a weapon, according to KCCI, which reported on the lawsuit. CyRide buses currently prohibit firearms onboard. Iowa law bars cities and other political subdivisions from regulating firearm possession or transportation. Gibson is not new to Iowa's gun-rights fights; she lobbied state lawmakers in 2017 alongside her sister, at age 11, to help pass House File 517, the law that legalized youth handgun shooting under adult supervision, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
A Preemption Law With Teeth
At the center of the suit is Iowa Code § 724.28, which bars political subdivisions from adopting policies or rules regulating firearm possession or transportation and allows people affected by illegal local restrictions to sue cities for statutory damages of $100 to $500 per day, capped at $5,000, plus attorney fees, per the Iowa Legislature. Per court documents cited by the station's report, the Iowa Firearms Coalition warned Ames back in 2025 that its CyRide bus policy violated that state law. Iowa also updated its rules in 2020 so that local governments may restrict weapons inside publicly owned buildings only if they make adequate arrangements to screen people and provide armed security inside the building or structure, according to the Giffords Law Center.
Ames has defended the ban by pointing to geography rather than city policy. Per the lawsuit, the city has said firearms are not allowed on CyRide buses because the routes travel across Iowa State University property, where firearms are prohibited outright. ISU policy bars possession or carrying of firearms on all university property and during university-sponsored activities unless someone secures formal approval through ISU Risk Management and the ISU Police Department, according to the university's own policy library.
A Transit System Caught Between Three Governments
CyRide is an Ames agency overseen by a six-member Board of Trustees drawing representatives from the City of Ames, Iowa State University, and the ISU Student Government, according to CyRide's own board records. That shared governance is exactly what creates the legal friction in Gibson's suit, since a municipal preemption statute now collides with a university's property-wide gun ban along the same routes. The stakes are not small: CyRide logged over 4.7 million passenger trips in 2024, making it the most heavily used public transit system in Iowa, per data compiled on Wikipedia's CyRide entry.
Ames isn't the first Iowa university town to face this exact standoff. In July 2020, the Iowa City City Council voted 5-2 to repeal its 2011 ban on firearms aboard municipal transit buses and inside city buildings specifically to avoid violating the state's expanded preemption rules, according to The Daily Iowan. That retreat came years before Iowa voters approved a 2022 constitutional amendment adding an explicit right to keep and bear arms to the state constitution and requiring courts to apply strict scrutiny to any government firearm restriction, per the NRA-ILA. Iowa also enacted permitless carry effective July 1, 2021, allowing open and concealed carry without a state permit.
City Declines To Discuss Pending Case
KCCI contacted the City of Ames for comment on the lawsuit, but the city said it does not comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit attributes to the city a reliance on ISU's campus-wide firearm policy.
With Iowa City's 2020 reversal as precedent and the state's 2022 strict-scrutiny mandate now in force, Gibson's lawsuit puts Ames in a familiar bind for Iowa municipalities that try to keep guns off public transit.
