The US Supreme Court will hear Wolford v. Lopez on Tuesday. The Second Amendment case tests whether a state may make it a crime for licensed gun owners to carry handguns onto private property open to the public unless the property owner has given express permission. The case arises from Hawaii law and asks how far a state may go in using private-property rules to narrow the “general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense” that the Court recognized in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen.
What is the law at issue?
Hawaii responded to the Bruen decision by passing Hawaii Revised Statutes § 134-9.5, enacted in 2023 as part of Act 52. Under subsection (a), a person carrying a firearm under a license issued pursuant to § 134-9 “shall not intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly enter or remain on private property of another person while carrying a loaded or unloaded firearm, whether the firearm is operable or not, and whether the firearm is concealed or unconcealed, unless the person has been given express authorization to carry a firearm on the property by the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the property.” Subsection (b) defines “express authorization” to mean either unambiguous written or verbal authorization or the posting of clear and conspicuous signage at the entrance or on the premises indicating that carrying or possessing a firearm is authorized. Violation is a misdemeanor.
What is the procedural background of the case?
After Act 52 took effect in July 2023, the plaintiffs filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, challenging several provisions, including § 134-9.5 and certain “sensitive places” restrictions. The district court granted a temporary restraining order and, by stipulation, converted it into a preliminary injunction. The court held that the Second Amendment protects carrying a handgun on private property that is held open to the public. Further, it held the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that Hawaii’s default rule, as applied to such property, could not be justified under Bruen’s historical-tradition test. It therefore enjoined enforcement of § 134-9.5 as to private property open to the public, while leaving in place the statute’s application to private property not open to the public.
In September 2024, a Ninth Circuit panel issued a consolidated opinion in the Hawaii case and related California litigation over similar carry restrictions. The panel affirmed preliminary injunctions against some California provisions but reversed the injunction against Hawaii’s § 134-9.5. The court concluded that there existed a “national tradition” of requiring owner consent for armed entry onto private land and held that Hawaii’s scheme, which permits consent by oral or written statement or by signage, was consistent with that tradition, at least as applied to property open to the public.
The plaintiffs sought rehearing en banc. The Ninth Circuit denied rehearing in January 2025 over several dissents that accused the panel of misapplying Bruen, relying on a small set of outlier and racially tainted historical statutes, and effectively authorizing Hawaii to “regulate around” the public-carry right. The plaintiffs then petitioned for certiorari. On October 3, 2025, the Supreme Court granted review, limited to the question concerning the private-property default rule, and later set the case for oral argument on January 20, 2026.
What specific legal issue is the Supreme Court being asked to decide?
The question is whether the Ninth Circuit made a mistake by deciding, in direct conflict with the Second Circuit in a similar case, that Hawaii can ban people with concealed-carry permits from carrying handguns on private property open to the public unless the property owner clearly says they allow it.
What is Wolford’s position?
The petitioners, three Hawaiian residents, frame their argument around Bruen’s articulation of a “general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense” and contend that Hawaii’s law is an effort to hollow that right out in practice. They begin with the text, insisting that carrying a handgun on property open to the public is quintessential “bearing arms” and that nothing in the Second Amendment’s language draws a distinction between streets and sidewalks on the one hand and commercial premises on the other. They note that the Ninth Circuit itself accepted that the Second Amendment’s plain text “encompasses a right to bear arms on private property held open to the public,” and they emphasize that § 134-9.5 is state action backed by criminal penalties rather than a purely private choice by individual owners.
On the practical effect of the law, the petitioners argue that when Hawaii’s extensive list of “sensitive places” and its private-property default rule are combined, the result is a de facto near-ban on public carry in Maui County and, by extension, much of Hawaii. They stress the estimate that licensed carriers are barred or presumptively barred from carrying on roughly 96.4% of publicly accessible land, leaving them with little more than the ability to “wander streets and sidewalks” armed. They say that contravenes Bruen’s warning against designating entire swaths of urban life as off-limits to public carry under the guise of “sensitive places.”
On history and tradition, the plaintiffs contend that Hawaii’s defense of § 134-9.5 rests on a very thin historical foundation. They point in particular to a 1771 New Jersey statute aimed at “preventing trespassing with guns” on others’ lands and to an 1865 Louisiana law, part of that state’s Black Codes, that criminalized carrying firearms on a “premises or plantation” without owner consent, as well as a few similar statutes in other states. They argue these laws are not meaningfully analogous to a broad twenty-first-century default rule governing modern commercial premises. They were directed primarily at hunting and poaching with long guns on enclosed or agricultural land and, in the case of the Black Code, were deeply entwined with racial subordination of newly freed Black citizens. Under Bruen and the Court’s later decision in United States v. Rahimi, they argue, such sparse and often discriminatory enactments cannot constitute a “well-established and representative” national tradition sufficient to sustain a sweeping modern restriction on carrying handguns for self-defense.
The petitioners also deny that they are seeking to override private property rights. They concede that owners may forbid guns on their premises, whether by policy, signage, or direct instruction, and that trespass law may be used to enforce those decisions. Their objection is to the State’s decision to criminalize carrying whenever an owner is silent, while continuing to presume consent for virtually every other ordinary object or activity. On their account, § 134-9.5 selectively inverts the implied-license default only for firearms, thereby using property law as a pretext to “regulate around” a constitutional right that the State disfavors.
What is the government’s (Hawaii’s) position?
Hawaii reframes the case away from a pure Second Amendment dispute and toward the law of property and consent. It argues that the Second Amendment protects the keeping and bearing of arms, but has never included a right to enter another person’s private property, armed or unarmed, without that person’s consent. The State invokes familiar common-law formulations, echoing the principles cited in Florida v. Jardines, that “no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave.” In this view, any “implied license” for the public to enter shops and similar premises is constructed and bounded by property and trespass law, which states have long had authority to define. Hawaii contends that specifying that an implied license does not extend to firearm carry is a regulation of access, not a direct restriction on gun possession, and therefore falls outside the core of the Second Amendment’s protections.
The State emphasizes the centrality of the right to exclude in American property law. It notes that various constitutional provisions, including the Takings Clause and the Fourth Amendment, presuppose and protect owners’ control over entry onto their land. It also draws analogies to First Amendment doctrine, where free speech rights do not allow would-be speakers to force their way onto private property open to the public, such as shopping centers, absent some special statutory scheme. In those settings, the owner’s decision to exclude demonstrators or solicitors prevails. Hawaii argues that the Second Amendment should operate similarly, protecting the right to be armed in public without giving rise to an entitlement to bring guns onto private premises over an owner’s objection.
On history, Hawaii argues that it has met its burden under Bruen. It points to colonial and nineteenth-century statutes that made armed entry onto another’s land without consent an offense, including the 1771 New Jersey “trespassing with guns” law and post-Civil War statutes in Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Oregon. The State characterizes these statutes as “relevantly similar” to § 134-9.5 in both purpose and mechanism: they aimed to protect property owners’ control over armed presence on their land, and they did so by criminalizing entry with firearms absent express permission. While acknowledging that some of these laws arose in the context of racially discriminatory Black Codes, Hawaii argues that backing up owner consent with criminal law remains relevant evidence of tradition, particularly given that the Second Amendment became applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment enacted in that period.
Hawaii further disputes that § 134-9.5 eliminates the public-carry right. It notes that the statute does not apply to property a person owns or leases, does not limit carry in public rights-of-way, and permits consent to be given informally as well as by signage. On the State’s account, a business owner who wishes to allow guns may say so once, adopt a policy, or post a sign. Nothing in the law forces owners to withhold consent. If, in practice, many owners decline to allow firearms, Hawaii characterizes that outcome as a private choice rather than state hostility to the Second Amendment.
What could happen at oral argument?
Several justices can be expected to test the petitioner’s assertion that carrying on private property open to the public must be treated identically to carrying on streets and sidewalks, and to press them on whether their position effectively constitutionalizes a particular implied-license default in which guns are permitted unless explicitly forbidden. Others may concentrate on Hawaii’s characterization of § 134-9.5 as a mere clarification of consent, asking whether a regime in which licensed carriers are presumptively barred from the vast majority of places they might go in daily life is functionally distinguishable from the broad “sensitive place” prohibitions Bruen cautioned against.
The justices are also likely to probe the historical record on which Hawaii relies. Questions may explore whether a small cluster of anti-poaching laws and Reconstruction-era statutes, some linked to Black Codes, can carry the weight that Bruen’s “historical tradition” standard demands, and how to treat the discriminatory context of some of those enactments. In addition, expect discussion of Rahimi’s language about “permissible reasons” for firearms regulation and whether protecting property owners’ rights to control their premises qualifies as such a reason without reviving the interest-balancing Bruen rejected.
How this case could impact future cases
If the Court strikes down Hawaii’s default rule, statutes in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and other jurisdictions that adopted similar “no carry unless expressly allowed” models after Bruen will be on very shaky ground, and many will likely be invalidated or significantly narrowed. In that scenario, the prevailing nationwide default would be that licensed carriers may bring firearms onto private property open to the public unless the owner clearly forbids them, whether through signage or other notice.
If the Court instead upholds § 134-9.5, this case will provide a blueprint for states that wish to limit practical public carry without directly banning it. Legislatures could reasonably conclude that they may flip the default on private property open to the public, making armed entry contingent on express consent, so long as they allow some means, such as oral or written permission, to grant that consent.
