Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii gun restriction

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law that makes it a crime for gun owners to bring their guns onto private property that is open to the public unless they have the property owner’s specific consent. In Wolford v. Lopez, by a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with a group of Maui residents with concealed-carry permits that the law violates the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms.

Thursday’s decision will have an impact not only in Hawaii, but also in four other states – California, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey – with similar laws.

In his 24-page opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law “hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, countered that the law “fairly applies a first principle of property law—the right to exclude—and does no harm to the Second Amendment.”

Hawaii passed the law in 2023, just under one year after the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In Bruen, the court invalidated a New York handgun-licensing law that required state residents who wanted to carry a handgun in public to show that they had a special need to defend themselves. The court also made clear that the Second Amendment protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. In his opinion for the majority in Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas emphasized that courts should uphold gun restrictions only if they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”