In a 6-3 rebuke of Hawaii’s attempt to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s NRA-backed Bruen (2022) decision, the Court ruled in Wolford v. Lopez that “Hawaii’s law prohibiting licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito, a President George W. Bush nominee to the Supreme Court.
The majority opinion is concise: “The restrictions imposed by Hawaii’s challenged law fall within the plain text of the Second Amendment, so the law is presumptively unconstitutional.”
The state had tried to effectively terminate the law-abiding citizen’s right to carry guns for self-defense outside their homes by making private property—gas stations, department stores, barber shops, churches—presumptively “gun-free” zones.
The majority opinion in Wolford v. Lopez outlined this by noting: “For years, the State of Hawaii made it almost impossible to obtain a license to carry a firearm. Four years ago, however, this Court held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen … that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense. Hawaii responded by replacing its old law on carry permits with new laws that achieved a similar result. At issue in this case is a Hawaii law that prohibits firearms on private property open to the public without the express and affirmative consent of the property owner. Hawaii’s new rule imposes severe restrictions on the daily activities of residents who have satisfied the State’s rigorous requirements for the issuance of a carry permit. When these permit holders leave home, not only must they take care to avoid all the territory where the possession of a gun is prohibited outright, but they may also be barred from entering many places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines, such as gas stations, restaurants, and stores. This law flips the default rule at common law, under which anyone has an implied license to enter property held open to the public unless the property owner withdraws consent.”
The Court then said, “No party disputes that petitioners are among ‘the People’ protected by the Second Amendment or that they seek to ‘bear’ ‘Arms.’ Therefore, ‘the plain text of the Second Amendment protects’ what petitioners want to do: carry handguns for self-defense.”
The opinion said the obvious in that the owners of stores, restaurants, and more that are open to the public can post signs to prohibit carry—the establishments are, after all, private property.
Several points made in the majority opinion also slam the state of Hawaii’s arguments for its attempt to make private property presumptively off-limits to concealed carriers.
In an outrageous (if humorous) attempt to keep these burdensome restrictions on a constitutionally protected individual right, the state of Hawaii actually said the “spirit of Aloha” somehow gave it the legal authority to all-but erase the Second Amendment rights of citizens who reside in Hawaii.
“Hawaii’s argument that its ‘particular customs and laws,’ … support the new default rule fails because the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United
States,” says this majority opinion. “The Second Amendment cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii … .”
Also, in response to examples of laws cited by Hawaii to show historical precedents, as the Bruen decision mandates, the Supreme Court wrote: “Hawaii also relies on an 1865 Louisiana statute enacted as part of the notorious Black Codes to disarm blacks and leave them defenseless against attacks. As the Court laid out in McDonald, the right to keep and bear arms was crucially important for vulnerable blacks during this period.”
So, the Court has answered: “Whether the Second Amendment allows a State to make it unlawful for concealed-carry license-holders to carry firearms on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization.”
The Court called this restriction on our freedom “unconstitutional.”
During the argument phase of this case, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted an amicus brief (otherwise known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief) to the Supreme Court citing the Bruen (2022) decision to argue the “government cannot enact licensing regimes that effectively eliminate the right to public carry.”
The Trump administration has been clear on this and several other Second Amendment issues: the Second Amendment is a civil right that must be protected. It is not, thanks to this and other decisions, a second-class right.
Indeed, as the NRA’s amicus brief to the Court pointed out: “Hawaii is not addressing an unprecedented societal concern posed by permitholders. Data show the opposite: carry-license revocations are exceedingly rare—typically between 0.01% and 0.32% annually—and often unrelated to criminal conduct. Texas conviction statistics show that permitholders are nearly seven times less likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. Colorado’s arrest-based revocation system shows that permitholders are more than eight times less likely to be arrested. Independent research, from RAND to the Chicago Tribune, and even data collected by the Violence Policy Center, confirm that permitholders offend at far lower rates than ordinary citizens. Concealed carry permitholders are exceptionally law-abiding, and Hawaii’s treatment of them as predatory actors has no empirical or historical foundation.”
Meanwhile, a handful of other states whose public-carry laws were also invalidated by Bruen—California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York—also enacted similar restrictions on law-abiding citizens’ right to keep and bear arms.
These laws, as the Supreme Court just ruled, are “unconstitutional.”
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