The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Hawaii’s law limiting where gun owners could carry their weapons on private property, as the justices warned states and lower courts to stop carving out exceptions to the Second Amendment.
Hawaii’s law stipulated that gun owners who had gone through a strict permitting process still needed explicit permission from a property owner before carrying weapons on that property, even if the land was generally open to the public, such as a gas station, restaurant or hardware store.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the law placed too much burden on gun owners, who would have to check with every business they wanted to enter before carrying their gun. The alternative, he said, was to give up their right to self-defense.
“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. We hold that the law is unconstitutional,” Justice Alito wrote. He was joined by the court’s other Republican appointees.
Justice Alito was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, said she saw the case less as a gun rights matter and more as a property rights issue.
She said property owners should have the right to exclude guns and that Hawaii’s law enforced that right.
Even if it were a Second Amendment matter, Justice Jackson said, the law would still survive constitutional scrutiny. She said the court was turning gun rights “into a free-for-all that lets the Judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else.”
“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law,” she wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
The case, Wolford v. Lopez, is the latest dispute to test the boundaries of Second Amendment rights, following a string of Supreme Court decisions that vastly expanded the right while recognizing some limits.
That began in 2008 with District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that the Second Amendment included a personal right to self-defense. The 2010 ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago applied Heller nationwide.
After lower courts carved out too many exceptions, the justices issued their 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, holding that only gun laws that align with the country’s history and tradition of firearms restrictions could survive constitutional scrutiny.
Justice Alito recounted that history Thursday as he chided judges for laboring to find exceptions to the Second Amendment.
Hawaii had argued that it was different.
The state said it had roughly two centuries of gun restrictions — dating to the era of the Kingdom of Hawaii, well before it became a U.S. territory in 1898 and a state in 1959 — and that Hawaii’s “Aloha spirit” was anathema to the idea that someone could carry a gun in daily life.
Justice Alito said the Second Amendment is a universal guarantee that applies everywhere, including Hawaii, the 50th state, where 8% of adults possess guns, and Alaska, the 49th state, where 59% of adults have firearms.
“Merely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees,” he wrote.
Hawaii also argued that its law matched gun restrictions that the Founders would have recognized.
The state and Justice Jackson pointed to Colonial-era laws restricting carrying guns on property without the permission of the owner. Justice Alito said those were restrictions on hunting, rather than on self-defense — the issue at the heart of the Second Amendment.
Hawaii also cited an 1865 Louisiana law, part of the so-called Black Codes, that forbade carrying guns on plantations without the explicit consent of the owner. Historians said that law was enforced chiefly against Black people as a way to deny them the gun rights held by White people.
Justice Barrett, in a concurring opinion, sharply criticized Hawaii for citing that as justification.
“It is beyond me why Hawaii would claim that these vile laws can justify its present-day restriction,” Justice Barrett said.
Justice Jackson, one of two Black members of the high court, said her colleagues were too hasty to reject the Black Codes as historical precedents.
She said that, given the way the majority had established a history test for gun laws, even the Black Codes might be valid analogs for modern-day restrictions.
“Confronting the origins of these laws is certainly uncomfortable. The Black Codes were ugly. And racist. And deplorable,” she wrote. “But the characteristics that make the Black Codes detestable do not automatically render these laws irrelevant to a fair assessment of the right to carry firearms, especially given how the court assesses that right.”
Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama, was unwilling to go that far.
Justice Kagan wrote her own dissent, saying she saw historical precedents for Hawaii’s law even without resorting to the Black Codes.
Gun control groups denounced the ruling.
“I will not mince words: This deeply dangerous majority opinion privileges guns over everything and all people in society,” said Kris Brown, president of Brady: United Against Gun Violence.
Still, gun rights advocates said the ruling sends a signal to states that continue to push for harsh restrictions on guns.
“These laws were always a blatant attempt by authoritarian states to nullify Bruen and redline the right to bear arms out of existence. We are glad to see this issue put in the ground where it belongs,” said Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition.
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