It is the latest gun restriction case to reach the justices since the court's 2022 landmark decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen
, which expanded the right to carry firearms outside the home and fundamentally reshaped how courts assess the constitutionality of gun laws.The case, Wolford v. Lopez, began as a lawsuit filed in June 2023 — on the one-year anniversary of Bruen — by the Hawaii Firearms Coalition and a group of Maui residents who are licensed gun owners, naming Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez as the defendant.
Alan Beck, a San Diego-based attorney who specializes in civil rights and firearms law and represents the plaintiffs, told Law360 on Friday he is "very happy" that the high court agreed to hear the case in the term that begins Monday.
The plaintiffs had sought to block Act 52, which makes it a crime for a concealed carry permit holder to bring a handgun onto 15 categories of property. The law, enacted in the wake of Bruen, also flips the default rule for private property: Previously, permit holders could carry firearms on private property unless the owner prohibited it; now, they are barred unless the owner expressly allows it, either verbally or in writing.
Gun rights advocates call such provisions "vampire rules," invoking the idea that, like vampires, gun owners cannot enter somebody's property without an explicit invitation.
"It is the most odorous restriction on carry, and we are very hopeful the Supreme Court will strike it down as violative of the Second Amendment," Beck said.
A federal court in Honolulu blocked portions of Hawaii's law with a preliminary injunction in August 2023, but the state appealed.
After consolidating the case with two appeals from California over similar laws — one establishing the same default rule and another imposing location-based bans — a Ninth Circuit panel reversed the injunctions as to bars and restaurants serving alcohol as well as beaches, parks and adjacent parking areas. The panel also upheld Hawaii's default rule. A divided full court later declined to rehear the case en banc.
In their April 1 certiorari petition, the Wolford plaintiffs argued Act 52 was enacted "specifically to negate" the effects of Bruen. Represented by Beck, the plaintiffs said the Ninth Circuit's decision created a split with the Second Circuit — a divide both courts acknowledged — over whether governments can presumptively prohibit licensed permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the owner's affirmative consent.
"To be sure, private property owners may decide to exclude people from their property," the plaintiffs wrote. "But that power resides with the property owner, not the government."
According to the petition, the individual plaintiffs — Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford and Atom Kasprzycki — were previously able to carry handguns at beaches, parks, restaurants serving alcohol and other private properties open to the public before Hawaii's law took effect.
Several amicus briefs have been filed in support of the plaintiffs, including one from 25 states.
Under Bruen, any law restricting the constitutional right to "bear arms" must survive a historical test: The government must prove that the law is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. That requires courts to examine historical and legislative records to determine whether modern gun laws have valid analogues dating to around 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified.
The Wolford plaintiffs criticized the Ninth Circuit for citing two historical laws — an 1865 Louisiana statute and a 1771 New Jersey statute — to justify Hawaii's default rule. They argued the Louisiana law, part of the "Black Codes," was designed to disarm freed Black people, while the New Jersey law applied only to private property not open to the public.
They further contended the Ninth Circuit misapplied the Bruen test by relying on laws "well outside the Founding Era" to uphold sweeping bans on carrying firearms in parks, beaches, playgrounds, youth centers, bars, restaurants, places of amusement and libraries.
"There is no tradition, either at the Founding or even in the modern era, of requiring prior permission from a property owner when entering land that is otherwise held open to the public," the plaintiffs wrote.
Beck said the Second and Third circuits have struck down default rules, and that the Ninth Circuit stands as an outlier.
"It's the only federal court at all in the country that has upheld a vampire law," he said. "There's a circuit split on this issue, so that's probably why the Supreme Court took [the question]."
--Editing by Philip Shea.