Supreme Court

SCOTUS Overturns Hawaii's Default Rule Against Guns on Private Property Open to the Public

The decision means similar laws in other states likewise violate the Second Amendment, and it casts doubt on the constitutionality of location-specific gun bans that cover a lot of territory.

Jacob Sullum | 6.25.2026 1:05 PM

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After the Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, several states made it easier to obtain carry permits but much harder to use them. Even as they eliminated requirements that applicants demonstrate a "special need" to carry guns in public for self-defense, they banned firearms from long lists of "sensitive" locations. On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected a variation on that theme: Hawaii's default rule against guns on private property open to the public.

After a federal judge in Hawaii enjoined enforcement of that rule in 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned her order, deeming the law consistent with the Second Amendment. Not so, the Supreme Court says in Wolford v. Lopez.

"This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives," Justice Samuel Alito writes in the majority opinion, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. "We hold that the law is unconstitutional."

For many years, Alito notes, Hawaii "made it almost impossible to obtain a license to carry a firearm." After Bruen, the state "responded by replacing its old law on carry permits 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."

That law, Alito says, "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. 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."

Those restrictions make daily life difficult for people attempting to exercise the right recognized in Bruen. "When these permit holders leave home in the........

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