Supreme Court Strikes Down Hawaii Law Requiring Permission to Carry Guns on Property Open to the Public

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law that made it a crime to carry a firearm onto private property open to the public, such as a gas station, restaurant, or grocery store, without the owner's explicit permission. The vote was 6 to 3.

The ruling in Wolford v. Lopez flips the default. Before Thursday, a concealed-carry permit holder in Hawaii needed a property owner's prior consent to bring a gun onto land open to the public, and carrying without it was a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison. Now the gun goes in by default, and it is up to the owner to say no.

The challengers were three Maui County residents with concealed-carry permits and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. They argued the rule violated the Second Amendment. The Court agreed and reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had upheld the law.

What the law did

Hawaii enacted the measure in 2023, about a year after the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen established that the Second Amendment protects a right to carry a handgun outside the home. The Hawaii statute set a presumption against carry: a permit holder committed a crime by entering publicly accessible private property while armed unless the owner had granted permission. CBS News reported the rule is sometimes called the "vampire rule," because the gun owner effectively had to be invited in.

The Court's decision does not reach Hawaii's other firearm rules. Restrictions on guns at bars, beaches, and parks were not part of the case, and limits at sensitive locations such as schools and government buildings are untouched. Private homes are also unaffected. Property owners can still bar firearms on their premises, including by posting a sign at the door.

Where it reaches beyond Hawaii

According to SCOTUSblog, the ruling affects four other states with similar laws: California, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. CBS News reported that the versions in New York, California, and Maryland had already been blocked by courts before Thursday's decision. In the other 45 states, licensed owners can generally carry onto publicly accessible private property without asking first.

How the case reached the Court

A federal district court initially sided with the challengers. The 9th Circuit then reversed and upheld Hawaii's law, finding there was likely "a national tradition ... of prohibiting the carrying of firearms on private property without the owner's oral or written consent."

The Trump administration backed the gun owners. The federal government argued the measure was "blatantly unconstitutional" and that a permit holder risked committing a crime by stopping for gas or running an errand. The Court agreed to hear the case in October and held argument in January.

The majority

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 24-page opinion for the Court. He concluded the Hawaii law fell within "the plain text of the Second Amendment" and then applied the Bruen test, which asks whether a modern restriction matches the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

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." He found the state's historical evidence insufficient. Hawaii had pointed to early laws against unauthorized hunting on another person's land, but Alito wrote that "the gap is just too wide." He also rejected the state's reliance on an 1865 Louisiana statute barring people from carrying firearms on another citizen's premises without consent, calling it "neither widespread nor widely accepted" and noting it was adopted to discriminate against formerly enslaved people after the Civil War.

The dissent

The Court's three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the principal dissent, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Jackson wrote that Hawaii's law "fairly applies a first principle of property law, the right to exclude, and does no harm to the Second Amendment." She added that the law "does not implicate the Second Amendment because there is no right to carry a gun onto private property without consent (as all agree), and the Constitution does not dictate the form of that required consent."

The disagreement turns on how to treat property that is privately owned but open to the public. The majority read the default rule as a burden on the right to carry in everyday public life. The dissent read it as an ordinary rule about who controls access to land.