Supreme Court Strikes Down Hawaii Concealed-Carry Law

Gun owners with concealed-carry permits may freely bring their firearms onto private properties that are also open to the public, such as gas stations, restaurants or stores, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a ruling that strikes down a Hawaii state law.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority said the Hawaii law - that required gun owners to obtain permission from an owner before bringing a gun onto their private property - imposed “a new and significant burden” on the right to bear arms.

While the ruling adds further Second Amendment protections for concealed-carry permit holders, it's unlikely to have a sweeping impact across the country because most states don't have a law like the one in Hawaii and allow concealed-carry permit holders to bring guns onto private property with no prior permission.

The states impacted will include New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California.

Hawaii’s state law is sometimes referred to as a “vampire law” because it aligns with the lore in “Dracula” that says the vampire antagonist is not allowed into homes unless invited first.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito argued that Hawaii’s law burdened the everyday routine of concealed carry permit holders.

“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.

“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.”

The National Rifle Association, or NRA, celebrated the court’s ruling Thursday, calling Hawaii’s law “an unconstitutional restriction that treated concealed-carry permit holders as second-class citizens on publicly accessible private property.”

“Law-abiding gun owners will no longer be forced to beg for special permission simply to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in public places,” John Commerford, the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, said in a statement.

The Supreme Court has grappled with state gun restriction laws since expanding Second Amendment rights in the 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which firmly established Americans have a right to carry firearms outside of their homes.

The ruling in Bruen created a new test for gun control laws, forcing courts and legislators to determine whether a law conflicts with the United States’ “history and tradition” of firearm ownership.

During oral argument in January, justices debated how to apply the Bruen test while also balancing the U.S.’s well-known private property laws.

Though all three liberal justices dissented from the majority, they outlined separate reasons for dissenting.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the laws requiring permission “respond to the dangers and harms that someone with a gun can cause on another person’s property.” Kagan wrote: “That conclusion is enough for me to resolve this case.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that Hawaii’s law did not harm the Second Amendment because “there is no right to carry a gun onto private property without consent, and the Constitution does not dictate the form of that required consent.”

“With this decision, the Court has now manipulated Bruen into a free-for-all that lets the Judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else. Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law,” Sotomayor wrote.

Gun control advocacy groups, such as Brady: United Against Gun Violence and GIFFORDS, created by former lawmaker Gabby Giffords, called the court’s opinion “deeply dangerous.”

“It is eminently reasonable that visitors receive property owners’ permission to bring firearms onto their private property open to the public,” Kris Brown, the president of Brady, said in a statement. “Yet the court has manipulated a legal test of their own design to launch this attack on public safety and our freedom from gun violence.”

Bill Clark, the senior litigation attorney at GIFFORDS Law Center, said they were “disappointed” with the Supreme Court’s decision and that the case “is another example of the Court’s conservative majority pushing it’s ‘guns everywhere’ agenda.”