The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear Wolford v. Lopez, a constitutional challenge to Hawaii’s 2023 law restricting where individuals with concealed carry permits may bring firearms. The case, which the justices added to their docket following their annual “long conference,” could have sweeping implications for gun rights and state-level firearm regulations nationwide.

Hawaii enacted its law in 2023 in response to the court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which expanded public-carry rights and required governments to justify firearm restrictions by reference to the nation’s “historical tradition.”

Under the Hawaii statute, individuals with concealed carry permits cannot carry handguns onto private property open to the public unless the property owner gives affirmative consent, such as by posting a sign permitting firearms. The law also designates a wide array of “sensitive locations” where guns are banned, including parks, playgrounds and establishments serving alcohol.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the law earlier this year, rejecting challenges from three Maui residents with concealed carry permits and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. A divided panel found that Hawaii’s restrictions were consistent with historical firearm regulations and that private property owners retain the right to exclude firearms from their premises. The full Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case.

The challengers petitioned the Supreme Court to review two central questions: (1) Whether Hawaii’s default prohibition on carrying firearms on private property without explicit permission violates the Second Amendment; and (2) Whether the Ninth Circuit applied the correct historical framework under Bruen.

In their brief, the challengers argued that by excluding most private property open to the public, the law effectively nullifies the right to carry firearms recognized in Bruen: “In holding the Second Amendment does not apply to private property open to the public, the Ninth Circuit’s decision renders illusory the right to carry in public.”

They further contended that the appellate court improperly relied on post-Reconstruction-era laws, rather than late 18th-century analogues, to justify Hawaii’s restrictions.

President Donald Trump’s administration filed an unsolicited amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant review. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Ninth Circuit’s decision “conflicts with Bruen’s recognition that the Nation does not have a tradition of broadly prohibiting the public carry of commonly used firearms for self-defense.” He warned that similar “Bruen-nullifying rules” have been adopted by at least five other states, representing more than a fifth of the US population.

Solicitor General Sauer wrote that Hawaii’s default rule “functions as a near-complete ban on public carry,” since most property owners do not post signs explicitly allowing firearms.

Hawaii officials have defended the law as consistent with both historical precedent and property rights. The state’s legal filings argue that open carry “has never been the default” in Hawaii and that property owners have always been entitled to exclude firearms.

“There can be no dispute that a private property owner has the right to exclude a person from her property because the person is carrying a gun, even if she has otherwise opened her property to the public,” the state wrote.