BREAKING: SCOTUS rules Hawaii law barring concealed carry on private property without permission unconstitutional

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday that a law in Hawaii barring concealed carry permit holders from carrying a firearm on private property unless they have received express permission from the owners is unconstitutional. 

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that following the 2022 Bruen decision, Hawaii replaced its older laws regarding firearms "with new laws that achieved a similar result. On a large portion of the land within the State’s boundaries, possession of a firearm is now flatly prohibited. And the law now before us severely burdens the ability to carry a firearm in much of the rest of the State by prohibiting firearms on private property without the express and affirmative consent of the property owner."

"This law departs sharply from the standard common-law rule on access to private property held open to the public. Under that rule, everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited from doing so. By contrast, under the new Hawaii law, no one carrying a firearm may enter without the property owner’s express authorization," Alito wrote. 

"The effect of this new rule is to impose severe restrictions on the daily activities of residents who have satisfied the State’s rigorous requirements for the issuance of a carry permit."

"When these permit holders leave home in the morning, not only must they take care to avoid all the territory where the possession of a gun is prohibited outright, but they may also be barred from entering many places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines, such as gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, “big box” stores, home improvement stores, barber shops or hair salons, dry cleaners, and laundromats."

Alito wrote that 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. We hold that the law is unconstitutional."
 

Alito said that the state’s reliance on laws dating back as far as the colonial era, including a law that was included in Louisiana’s Black Code, "cannot be taken seriously." He wrote, "Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii’s claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously."

 

Wolford v Lopez Opinion by Hannah Nightingale