Wolford v. Lopez

U.S. Supreme Court Holds Unconstitutional a Hawaii Law Prohibiting the Licensed Carry of Firearms on Private Property, Open to the Public, Without Express Consent

Overview

In 2022, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen affirmed the “Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.” Subsequently, five states including Hawaii adopted laws restricting the carry of firearms, including by licensed permit-holders, onto “private property open to the public.” In June 2026, Wolford v. Lopez held that the Second Amendment was violated by the “Hawaii law that prohibits firearms on private property open to the public without the express and affirmative consent of the property owner.”

Hawaii’s State Law at Issue

The challenged law “generally prohibit[ed] licensed individuals from carrying a firearm, even if unloaded or inoperable . . . onto private property held open to the public” except where “the owner, lessee, operator, or manager” has given “express authorization.” Unless a store “has posted a sign saying ‘Guns Welcome’ or something to that effect, each visit could expose [customers] to criminal liability.” Wolford reflected that even shopkeepers “who do not object to entry by carry permit-holders,” may hesitate to hang such a sign, fearing alienation of other patrons. Notably,wWithout this law, storeowners could still restrict carry permit-holders from entering. The Court described Hawaii’s legislation as “impos[ing] a new burden on permit holders who will have to somehow obtain permission to carry a firearm on the property before stepping foot on it.” 

Bruen-Heller Framework for Laws Challenged Under the Second Amendment

Wolford analyzed Hawaii’s law under the following steps, established in Bruen and Heller:

1. The Court determines “whether the challenged law falls within the plain text” of the Second Amendment by asking if the legislation:
   • Applies to “the people,” defined as “all members of the political community,”
   • Concerns “arms,” defined as “weapons customarily used for offensive or defensive purposes,” and
   • Restricts keeping (possessing) or bearing (carrying) arms.
2. If the above is answered yes, the law “is presumptively unconstitutional, which means that it may violate the preexisting right that the [Second] Amendment codified.”
3. The government may then argue the law’s constitutionality by showing that it does “not infringe the historical understanding” of “the right to keep and bear arms.”

Based on this analysis, Wolford concluded: “The restrictions imposed by Hawaii’s challenged law fall within the plain text of the Second Amendment, so the law is presumptively unconstitutional.”

Analysis of Historical Analogues “Old Legal Rules”

Under the framework established for Second Amendment challenges, courts examine whether the law is consistency with historical analogues (“old legal rules”). “[T]he ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the historical analogue and modern regulation must be close enough to enable a court to say: ‘Because this historical law was understood to be compatible with the right codified by the Second Amendment, we can infer that the restriction imposed by the modern law is likewise consistent with that right.’” Bruen enumerated the following factors as relevant to this analysis:

Hawaii’s Law was Not Proven Sufficiently Similar to Historical Analogues

Wolford held that the analogues (“old legal rules”) offered by the State, which “principally targeted unauthorized hunting,” were not similar enough to justify Hawaii’s new legislation. The historical laws sought to address “the firing of guns, which created a risk of inadvertently inflicting death or serious injury on the owner of the property, others who were authorized to use the property, and livestock.” In contrast, “[t]he conduct restricted by the Hawaii law has none of these effects. Others on the premises will not even notice a person peacefully carrying a concealed weapon in the manner [already] demanded by Hawaiian law.”

To determine whether the historical analogues are “relevantly similar,” the question in Wolford became: “Because it was accepted that prohibiting unauthorized hunting on private land was consistent with the Second Amendment right, can we infer that it is also consistent with that right to ban a person who is lawfully carrying a concealed handgun for self-defense from entering a gas station, coffee shop, grocery store, or other private property open to the public without express and unambiguous consent?” Alluding to a no, the Court concluded: “The question answers itself.”

Finally, Hawaii’s “particular customs and laws” did not satisfy the analogue requirement, as “the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States.” The Court enumerated that the Second Amendment “cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii . . . any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald). Merely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees that apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Summary

Under the Bruen-Heller Framework, a law challenged as violating the Second Amendment may be upheld as constitutional if “relevantly similar” historical analogues (“old legal rules”) show the new legislation is consistent with “the right to keep and bear arms.” In Wolford, the Court observed that the analogues offered largely consisted “of laws that prohibited unauthorized hunting of deer or small game on someone else’s private property.” The Court described the gap as “wide” between these historical regulations and Hawaii’s law prohibiting carry permit-holders from entering private property, open to the public, without express consent.

Held: “Hawaii’s law prohibiting licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.”

References

1. New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 2 (2022). Four years before Wolford, Bruen held “that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense.” Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ____ slip op. at 10 (2026).
2. After Bruen, the states of CA, HI, MD, NJ, and NY enacted “new laws provid[ing] that no one carrying a firearm may enter [private property open to the public] without express authorization.” Wolford, at 10.
3. “This [Hawaii] law flips the default rule at common law, under which anyone has an implied license to enter property held open to the public unless the property owner withdraws consent.” Wolford, at 1.
4. Consent had to be communicated through “clear and conspicuous signage” or “‘[u]nambiguous written or verbal authorization’ to carry a firearm on the premises from ‘the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the property'” or his agent. Wolford, at 12, 14 (quoting Haw. Rev. Stat. § 134–9.5(b) (2023)).
5. Some storeowners may “only be willing to consent discreetly to the entry of permit holders who make the effort to inquire. This arrangement imposes a new burden on permit holders who will have to somehow obtain permission to carry a firearm on the property before stepping foot on it.” Wolford, at 3.
6. “[O]wners of establishments that are open to the public can [already] admit or exclude persons who are carrying guns for self-defense under either the common-law rule or Hawaii’s law.” Wolford, at 2.
7. The Court described that Hawaii’s “law severely hampers the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise the right Bruen recognized as they go about their daily lives.” Wolford, at 3.
8. District of Colombia v. “Heller explained, and later cases have reiterated, that the Second Amendment ‘codified a pre-existing right.'” Id. at 4, 5 n.2.
9. “No party disputes that petitioners are among ‘the people’ protected by the Second Amendment or that they seek to ‘bear’ ‘Arms.’ Therefore, ‘the plain text of the Second Amendment protects’ what petitioners want to do: carry handguns for self-defense.” Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ___ slip op. at 2 (2026).
10. ¹”To satisfy Bruen, Hawaii must identify historical laws that pursued an analogous goal in an analogous way.” Wolford, at 5 (Barrett, J., concurring).
11. ¹”[T]he best evidence [of constitutionality] is often what Bruen called historical analogues, old legal rules from which a court may draw a strong inference that the . . . law at issue is consistent with the” 2nd Amendment Id. at 7.
12. The State’s historical analogues “applied to land where [hunting] game could be found, not retail establishments that residents of cities and suburbs frequent as part of their daily routines.” Their “aim was to prevent the distinctive harms and risks associated with unauthorized hunting . . . They had little if any impact on the Second Amendment’s central objective: protecting the fundamental right to self-defense.” Wolford, at 21.
13. “Those [historical] laws had little if any impact on the Second Amendment’s central objective of protecting the fundamental right to self-defense, and their obvious aim was to prevent the distinctive harms and risks associated with unauthorized hunting.” Wolford, at 3.
14. “Hawaii’s proffered historical analogues do not support the constitutionality of its new default rule.” Id.
15. The “‘overwhelming evidence’ shows an ‘enduring American tradition permitting public carry.’ Hawaii’s prohibitions on public carry represent a distinct outlier.” Id. at 19.
16. “[T]he ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the historical analogue and modern regulation must be close enough to enable a court to say: ‘Because this historical law was understood to be compatible with the right codified by the Second Amendment, we can infer that the restriction imposed by the modern law is likewise consistent with that right.'” Wolford, at 8.
17. “In order to be sufficiently similar to the modern law being challenged, a putative analogue need not be a ‘dead ringer’ or ‘historical twin.'” Wolford, at 8 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S., at 30).

Related from Blue to Gold

• US v. Hemani: Marijuana Use Alone Doesn’t Bar Gun Rights
• What Is LEOSA? A Plain-English Guide for Active and Retired Officers
• Can Police Unload or Disassemble a Lawfully Carried Gun During a Traffic Stop?

This article is legal training, not legal advice. Check your state law and your agency policy, because both can be more restrictive than the Fourth Amendment.