The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Hawaii law banning people from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public without express permission from the owner violates the Second and 14th amendments.

The 6-3 decision in Wolford v. Lopez reverses a Ninth Circuit ruling last year that had found the law constitutional. It marks the latest expansion of gun rights since the top court said that Americans have a constitutional right to carry firearms outside the home in the 2022 landmark decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen .

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that provisions of Hawaii's Act 52, which the state enacted roughly one year after the Bruen decision, cannot be reconciled with the right to bear arms.

The law "departs sharply from the standard common-law rule on access to private property held open to the public," Justice Alito wrote. "Under that rule, everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited from doing so."

He added that the Hawaii 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."

Act 52 was one of many gun control measures that legislatures across the United States enacted in the wake of the Bruen decision, which held that the right to possess firearms in self-defense, first recognized in the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller , also extends to public places.

In Bruen, the court said the federal government and states had to prove the constitutionality of their gun laws by tracing them to historical regulations from the founding era.

At the same time, Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion in Bruen clarified that the historical analogy framework permits some long-standing restrictions on gun rights, including bans in "sensitive places" like schools, government buildings and polling places.

In the aftermath of Bruen, jurisdictions supporting gun control, including some hosting the country's most populous cities, scrambled to impose restrictions on carrying firearms by designating some public places as off-limits for guns.

On June 2, 2023, Hawaii enacted Act 52, making it a misdemeanor for a licensed concealed carry permit holder to bring a handgun onto 15 categories of property, including places like parks, beaches, schools and banks. The law also flipped the default rule for carrying firearms in private property, from one where they were allowed unless the property owner prohibited them, to one where they are barred unless the owner expressly allows it, either verbally or in writing. Four other states enacted similar legislation, the opinion said.

On the one-year anniversary of the Bruen decision, three weeks after Hawaii enacted Act 52, the Hawaii Firearms Coalition and a group of Maui residents who are licensed gun owners — Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford and Atom Kasprzycki — sued the state in federal court in a bid to block the law.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii agreed to temporarily pause the law, and the state appealed. The Ninth Circuit later consolidated the case with two other appeals arising from two separate lawsuits challenging a similar law in California that imposed a default rule and created location bans on permit holders.

Applying the Bruen framework, the Ninth Circuit determined that because the cases challenged state laws, the constitutional analysis had to consider the historical understanding of the right to bear arms at two points — when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, and when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. That's because the 14th Amendment is what extended federal constitutional protections against government overreach to actions by the states.

On that basis, the Ninth Circuit found that location-based restrictions on carry in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, beaches, parks and similar areas were constitutional.

The panel also concluded that Hawaii's default rule did not violate the Second Amendment, but struck down California's based on what it viewed as a crucial distinction: Hawaii's law allows property owners to signal consent to firearms carry through signage, as well as orally or in writing, whereas California's permits consent only through conspicuous signage.

The Ninth Circuit panel denied rehearing in January 2025, and a full court denied rehearing en banc over the objections of eight circuit judges, paving the way for a fight before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices agreed to take the case in October.

Alan Beck, who represents the petitioners, said in a phone interview with Law360 that he was pleased with the court's decision.

"The ruling is the correct one, and I am happy that my clients will be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights," he said.

"The law we were challenging we called the default rule, or the 'vampire rule,'" he said, evoking Bram Stoker's "Dracula," in which vampires cannot enter private homes unless they are formally invited.

In this case, "it was really an attempt to get around Bruen and, as a practical matter, effected a ban on public carry," Beck explained.

"I am very happy that the court reached the decision that it did because otherwise public carry would have been effectively banned," he said.

His colleague, Mark Pennak, said in an email that the court's opinion reaffirmed Bruen "and reached the correct result based on the Second Amendment's text and this nation's history and traditions of firearms regulation."

A spokesperson for the Hawaii Attorney General's Office, which responded to the case, said in an email to Law360 that while the office was disappointed with the outcome, they respected the court's decision.

"The state of Hawaiʻi will continue to pursue common-sense regulation of firearms, consistent with the Second Amendment, for the safety of our people," the email said.

During oral arguments on Jan. 20, at least four conservative justices signaled skepticism toward Act 52, at times likening it to restrictions on political speech and questioning whether it relegates gun rights to "second-class status."

A central battle was whether Hawaii's law fit within the Supreme Court's historical tradition framework. The state pointed to laws including a 1771 New Jersey anti-poaching statute and an 1865 Louisiana measure enacted amid the racially discriminatory Black Codes, which restricted firearms on private property without owner consent.

Those analogues drew sustained scrutiny.

In his opinion, Justice Alito called the laws cited "vastly different from Hawaii's new default rule. They consist almost entirely of laws that prohibited unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else's private property."

He also questioned the logic of relying on the Louisiana law enacted to suppress the rights of newly freed Black Americans after the Civil War.

This law "provided a tool for disarming blacks and thus leaving them defenseless against attacks," Justice Alito wrote, explaining why it was a poor example.

Hawaii's suggestion "that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously," he added.

The majority wrote that regardless of Hawaii's own historical traditions of regulating weapons, dating back to the time it was a kingdom, "local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the states through the 14th Amendment."

However, in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and in a separate dissenting opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the historical analogues were found to be sufficient.

In her dissent, Justice Jackson took time to again rail against Bruen, writing that "the majority's analysis demonstrates that, under Bruen, a judge can always choose to invalidate a modern regulation, so long as the judge points to some distinction between the modern regulation and the historical examples (really, any difference at all, no matter how small or irrelevant)."

She added that "the unfortunate reality is that, regardless of the historical record, the will of the state's legislature, or the needs of the local community, Bruen's historical inquiry almost always 'cabins' judicial discretion in only one direction: stymieing legislative efforts to restrict guns."

Concurring with the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justices Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed with Hawaii and with dissenting Justices Jackson and Sotomayor, who also argued the case was not about Second Amendment rights but about property owners' rights.

"No one doubts that all property owners in Hawaii could bar the carry of arms on their respective premises, if they wanted to. But the Second Amendment does not apply to private parties. It does apply to the states," Justice Barrett wrote.

"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 added.

Justice Jackson disagreed.

"There is no constitutional right to enter private property without the owner's permission, let alone with a firearm," she wrote.

"Of course, the real irony is that the court's effort to rein in judicial discretion has resulted in an arbitrary rule that unleashes judges to thwart gun regulation at every turn," she added.

The petitioners are represented by Alan A. Beck of Law Offices of Alan Beck, Kevin Gerard O'Grady of The Law Office of Kevin O'Grady LLC and Mark William Pennak of Maryland Shall Issue Inc.

The federal government is represented by Sarah M. Harris of the U.S. Solicitor General's Office.

Hawaii is represented by Neal Katyal of Milbank LLP.

The case is Wolford et al. v. Lopez, case number 24-1046, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

--Editing by Daniel King.

Update: This article has been updated with additional information and comments.