The US Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law requiring licensed permit holders to obtain a property owner’s express permission before carrying a firearm onto private property open to the public. In its ruling, the Court held 6-3 that the rule violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution.
The decision in Wolford v. Lopez invalidates a centerpiece of the carry regime Hawaii enacted after the Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which recognized a right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that Hawaii had flipped the common-law rule under which anyone, including those lawfully armed, may enter property held open to the public unless the owner withdraws consent. By requiring affirmative consent for firearms specifically, the Court reasoned, the state imposed a “new and significant burden” on permit holders, who would otherwise risk criminal liability merely by entering gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores and other everyday businesses without a posted welcome.
Hawaii had defended the law as a property measure, not a gun ban. The state argued the rule never triggered the Second Amendment at all, because the right to bear arms as understood at the Founding did not include a right to enter private property without the owner’s consent. The statute merely clarified that Hawaii’s implied right to enter property open to the public does not extend to carrying a gun, a default the state said matched its history: the Kingdom of Hawaii banned dangerous weapons under King Kamehameha III in 1833, and the islands never developed a custom of armed carry.
The state also pointed to what it called “relevantly similar” historical analogues requiring consent for armed entry, including a 1771 New Jersey law barring anyone from carrying a gun on land not their own without written permission, along with colonial statutes in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and Massachusetts, and Reconstruction-era laws in Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Oregon. Hawaii argued these protected owners’ right to exclude in the same way as its law, and that terms like “premises” and “plantation” encompassed businesses open to the public.
The majority rejected both arguments. Applying Bruen‘s two-step test, the Court found the law falls within the plain text of the Second Amendment, making it presumptively unconstitutional, and that a historical analysis provided by Hawaii could not justify its post-Bruen restrictions. The state’s colonial-era and founding-era examples, the majority said, were largely anti-poaching statutes aimed at unauthorized hunting on private land, too dissimilar from a rule governing retail establishments residents visit daily.
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stressed that a property law regulating arms-bearing conduct still triggers Second Amendment scrutiny, and that Hawaii’s rule failed because it targeted the general presence of firearms rather than any specific risk of misuse.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, arguing the case concerns property rights, not gun rights. She wrote that no one has a right to enter private property without consent, that states have long set the rules governing the form of that consent, and that the majority had “manipulated Bruen into a free-for-all” that privileges firearm access above competing interests. Justice Elena Kagan dissented separately, concluding the law was a permissible modern analogue to founding-era restrictions on carrying guns onto another’s land.
The challenge was brought by three Maui County concealed-carry permit holders and an organizational plaintiff. A federal district court had enjoined the law as applied to property open to the public; the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, and the full court denied rehearing en banc. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
