WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 25 struck down a Hawaii law that required gun owners to get permission before bringing a firearm into a store or other private property that’s open to the public, delivering a setback for the gun control movement.
The 6-3 ruling from an ideologically divided court came four years after it dramatically expanded the Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home.
Hawaii and four other Democratic-led states − California, Maryland, New York and New Jersey − responded to that 2022 decision by limiting where in public guns can be carried as the nation remains divided over how to prevent mass shootings and other gun violence.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said Hawaii’s law imposes “severe restrictions” on the daily activities of gun owners who may be barred from entering many places people routinely visit, such as gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, barber shops and laundromats.
“This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Alito wrote. “We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”
The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote.
In a statement, Hawaii’s Department of the Attorney General expressed disappointment in the ruling but said the state “will continue to pursue commonsense regulation of firearms, consistent with the Second Amendment, for the safety of our people.”
The high court’s decision doesn’t affect Hawaii’s outright ban on guns in some “sensitive” public areas, including beaches, parks, schools and playgrounds. The justices limited their review of Hawaii’s 2023 law to the state’s requirement that gun owners need consent – verbally, in writing, or through a posted sign − before carrying a weapon in other public places.
Property owners have always had the ability to restrict weapons. But Hawaii and other states flipped the default, prohibiting guns unless an owner gives express permission, rather than allowing guns unless they’re expressly prohibited.
Gun rights supporters have nicknamed these laws “Vampire Rules,” after the 1897 Gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker in which Dracula couldn’t enter a room unless invited.
Three Maui residents with concealed-carry permits, as well as a local gun-rights group, challenged Hawaii’s law. In an appeal backed by the Trump administration, they argued that the law made it nearly impossible for gun owners to exercise the right to carry arms in public, which the court recognized in its 2022 landmark ruling New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
“Hawaii can’t gut Bruen,” Sarah Harris, a principal deputy solicitor general for the Trump administration, told the court.
Hawaii said its law upholds both the right to bear arms and a property owner’s right to keep out guns.
“There is no constitutional right to assume that every invitation to enter private property includes an invitation to bring a gun,” Neal Katyal, the lawyer who represented Hawaii, said during the January oral arguments in Wolford v. Lopez.
But many of the conservative justices seemed more concerned with the law’s effect on gun owners and whether it met the historical test the court set in 2022 for evaluating gun regulations.
“You’re just relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status,” Alito told Katyal during the oral arguments,
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the law “falls well within the historical tradition” of gun regulation.
The appeals court pointed to several historical rules, particularly one from New Jersey in 1771 and another from Louisiana in 1865, both of which required a person to have permission before carrying firearms onto private property.
The Trump administration and gun owners argued the historical rules didn’t support Hawaii’s law because New Jersey’s law prevented poachers from hunting on private land closed to the public, and Louisiana’s law was aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of formerly enslaved people.
The court’s conservative majority agreed.
Alito said the historical laws are “vastly different” from Hawaii’s rule.
In her dissent, Jackson said the majority is manipulating its gun rule test “into a free-for-all that lets the Judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else.”
Gun violence prevention groups echoed that sentiment when lambasting the ruling.
Bill Clark, an attorney with the Giffords Law Center, said the decision is “another example of the Court’s conservative majority pushing its ‘guns everywhere’ agenda.’”
“Ultimately, the court makes it clear that it cares little about the threat of gun violence posed to the American people,” added Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence.
The challenge to Hawaii’s law is not the only gun rights case the Supreme Court took up this term.
The justices also ruled that a Texas man’s regular use of marijuana was not a good enough reason to criminally charge him for owning a gun − a decision that, while narrow, weakens a federal law aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people while strengthening gun owners’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.
In 2024, the court upheld a law banning domestic abusers from owning guns.
In other recent decisions involving guns, the justices struck down a federal ban on bump stocks but upheld regulations of untraceable “ghost guns.”
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