Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii law restricting guns on private property open to public

The US Supreme Court struck down a 2023 Hawaii law that barred permit holders from carrying handguns on publicly accessible private property without explicit owner consent. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the conservative majority ruled the restriction violates the Second Amendment. The decision casts doubt on similar laws in California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, while drawing sharp criticism from liberal dissenters who argue the Court is inconsistently applying its own historical test.

Hawaii gun law struck down

• ▪The US Supreme Court struck down a 2023 Hawaii law that barred gun owners from carrying handguns on publicly accessible private property without explicit owner permission
• ▪The Supreme Court decided the case, Wolford v. Lopez, in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, with the conservative majority ruling the law unconstitutional under the Second Amendment
• ▪Prior to the ruling, carrying a firearm on private property without consent was a misdemeanor in Hawaii, punishable by up to one year in prison
• ▪The ruling directly impacts similar "default" private property gun restrictions enacted in California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland

Bruen historical analogy test

• ▪The Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen established that modern gun regulations must be "relevantly similar" to laws from the founding era to be constitutional
• ▪The Bruen decision led to a flood of legal challenges, resulting in nearly 100 gun laws being successfully challenged in lower courts within the first year after the ruling

Founding-era private property restrictions

• ▪Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan argued that the historical laws had broader safety purposes and were sufficiently analogous to Hawaii's modern regulation
• ▪Hawaii identified four founding-era laws from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York that restricted carrying firearms or hunting on private land without owner permission
• ▪Justice Samuel Alito dismissed the historical laws cited by Hawaii, asserting they were enacted to prohibit unauthorized hunting rather than to regulate public safety in commercial establishments

Judicial criticism of Bruen

• ▪Lower court judges have expressed confusion over how to apply the Bruen historical test, leading to highly inconsistent judgments across the federal judiciary
• ▪Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent criticized the majority for manipulating the Bruen precedent into a "free-for-all" that allows the judiciary to override legislative decisions

Inconsistent application across cases

• ▪Critics argue the Supreme Court applied the Bruen test inconsistently by upholding the politically popular domestic violence restriction in Rahimi while striking down Hawaii's law despite closer historical matches
• ▪The Supreme Court on June 21, 2024 upheld a federal gun restriction on domestic violence offenders in United States v. Rahimi by relying on a relatively dissimilar founding-era bond law