The US Supreme Court on Thursday dejected a Hawaii law requiring license holders to obtain the express permission of a property owner before carrying a firearm on private property open to the public. In its decision, the court ruled 6 to 3 that the rule violated the Second And Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.
The decision in Wolford vs. Lopez invalidates a heart of the Carry regime Hawaii was enacted following the Court’s 2022 ruling New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruenwhich recognized the right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, found that Hawaii had reversed the common law rule that anyone, including lawfully armed people, could enter property open to the public unless the owner withdrew their consent. By explicitly requiring affirmative consent for firearms, the state placed a “new and significant burden” on permit holders who would otherwise be subject to criminal prosecution if they entered gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores and other convenience stores without a welcome sign.
Hawaii had defended the law as a property measure, not as a gun ban. The state argued that the rule did not trigger the Second Amendment at all because the right to bear arms, as understood at the founding, did not include a right to enter private property without the owner’s consent. The law simply clarified that Hawaii’s implied right to enter public lands does not extend to carrying a weapon, a requirement the state says is consistent with its history: the Kingdom of Hawaii dangerous weapons prohibited under King Kamehameha III. in 1833, and the islands never developed the custom of armed carry.
The state also pointed to so-called “relevantly similar” historical analogies that require consent to armed intrusion, including a New Jersey law of 1771 It prohibits anyone from carrying a weapon on land that is not their own without written permission, as well as colonial laws in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts, and Reconstruction-era laws in Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Oregon. Hawaii argued these protected property owners’ right to exclusion in the same manner as its law and that terms such as “premises” and “plantation” included publicly accessible businesses.
The majority rejected both arguments. Apply The bridge‘S two-stage testthe court found that the law fell within the plain language of the Second Amendment, making it presumptively unconstitutional, and that a historical analysis presented by Hawaii could not justify its successor rule.The bridge Restrictions. The state’s colonial and founding-era examples, the majority said, were largely anti-poaching laws that targeted unauthorized hunting on private property and were too different from a rule that governs retail stores that residents frequent every day.
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett emphasized that a property law regulating gun-carrying conduct still triggers Second Amendment scrutiny and that Hawaii’s rule failed because it targeted the general presence of firearms rather than a specific risk of misuse.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, arguing the case concerned property rights and not gun rights. She wrote that no one has the right to enter private property without consent, that states have long established the rules governing the form that consent takes, and that the majority has “manipulated Bruen into an everyman” that privileges access to firearms over competing interests. Justice Elena Kagan dissented separately, concluding that the law was a valid modern analog to founding-era restrictions on carrying weapons on foreign land.
The lawsuit was filed by three Maui County concealed carry permit holders and an organizational plaintiff. A federal district court had ordered the law to apply to publicly accessible property; the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit turned aroundand the full court refused to hold the hearing en banc. The Supreme Court overturned the judgment and remanded it.
