Supreme Court Drops Another Big 2nd Amendment Ruling

By
Billy Costigan
-

The Supreme Court handed down another major Second Amendment decision Thursday, and this one is likely to ripple far beyond Hawaii.

In a 6-3 ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court struck down a Hawaii law that broadly prohibited licensed gun owners from carrying firearms onto privately owned property that is open to the public unless the property owner had expressly given permission. The majority concluded that the restriction conflicts with the Constitution, setting the stage for new legal challenges in several other states with similar laws.

Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, and he didn’t leave much doubt about where the Court stood.


“The restrictions imposed by Hawaii’s challenged law fall within the plain text of the Second Amendment, so the law is presumptively unconstitutional,” Alito wrote.

He continued by explaining that there was no dispute over whether the plaintiffs were among “the people” protected by the Second Amendment or whether they were seeking to “bear” arms. In the Court’s view, carrying a handgun for self-defense falls squarely within the constitutional protection.

“The law is presumptively unconstitutional,” Alito wrote again, emphasizing the point.

He also argued that Hawaii’s statute went well beyond a narrow public safety measure.


“The law hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” he wrote.

Joining Alito were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Barrett also wrote a separate concurring opinion that added another layer to the Court’s reasoning.

She stressed that the case was not about whether a private business owner can prohibit firearms on his or her own property. Property owners remain free to establish their own rules. The constitutional question, she explained, was whether the state itself could impose a blanket default ban on nearly every privately owned business or location open to the public.


According to Barrett, Hawaii’s own explanation for the law worked against it.

“The rule does not target any particular abuse of firearms at all,” she wrote. “Rather than identifying a specific threat to public peace and safety, Hawaii admits that it enacted the rule because many of its citizens oppose the public carry of guns.”

She added that the state was responding to a general dislike of firearms rather than any identifiable increase in criminal misuse.

“In other words, Hawaii is responding to the general danger associated with the presence of firearms, not to any specific, heightened risk of their misuse.”

Barrett then addressed what she viewed as a fundamental constitutional principle.

“While most Hawaiians might prefer that no one carry firearms in public places, a majority’s opposition to a constitutional right is not a permissible basis for restricting it,” she wrote.

Quoting longstanding Supreme Court precedent, Barrett reminded readers that the Bill of Rights exists precisely to protect certain freedoms from shifting political majorities.

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy” and “to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials,” she wrote.

She even drew an analogy to the First Amendment, suggesting that just as a state could not broadly prohibit people from wearing religious attire, such as a hijab, on private property open to the public, it likewise could not broadly prohibit the exercise of Second Amendment rights in those same places.


The significance of the ruling extends well beyond Hawaii. According to SCOTUSblog, states including California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York have enacted comparable laws that presume firearms are prohibited on private property open to the public unless owners explicitly allow them. Those statutes are now likely to face renewed constitutional challenges in light of Thursday’s decision.

It’s important to note what the Court did not decide. The ruling does not prevent individual property owners from posting “no firearms” signs or establishing their own policies. Instead, it rejects the idea that a state can automatically impose that rule across virtually all private property open to the public without running afoul of the Second Amendment.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR