The Supreme Court has struck down a Hawaii gun law that required individuals to obtain explicit permission from private business owners before carrying a firearm onto their property. The decision in Wolford v. Lopez, decided along party lines, has reignited criticism of the Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment, particularly its reliance on the 2022 Bruen precedent.
Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Wolford v. Lopez draws heavily from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), a decision that has been widely criticized for its ambiguity. The Bruen precedent requires judges to determine if modern gun regulations are "relevantly similar" to laws existing at the time the Constitution was written. Critics argue that the Court has provided insufficient guidance on what constitutes sufficient similarity, and Alito's opinion in Wolford offers little clarification.
The Hawaii law in question effectively barred guns from most private businesses by requiring owners to secure permission. While acknowledging the law's restrictive nature, the majority opinion devoted limited attention to its historical parallels. Hawaii presented four early American laws from Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York that restricted carrying guns on private property without owner permission. Alito's opinion downplayed these laws, asserting they were primarily enacted to prevent unauthorized hunting.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her dissent, countered that these historical laws often had broader purposes, citing a 1763 New York statute intended to prevent "great Danger of the Lives of his Majesty’s Subjects" and protect property. She argued that Alito's dismissal of these laws was inconsistent with the Court's own precedent.
Critics also point to the Court's decision in United States v. Rahimi (2024), which upheld a federal law prohibiting individuals under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. In Rahimi, the Court found sufficient historical similarity to founding-era laws requiring individuals to post a bond to ensure good behavior. Critics argue that the historical law cited in Rahimi was less similar to the modern statute than the laws Hawaii identified in the Wolford case. This perceived inconsistency leads to the conclusion that the Court's application of the Bruen standard may be arbitrary.
The decision in Wolford v. Lopez, following the pattern set by Bruen, suggests that gun regulations that face opposition from conservative justices are unlikely to be upheld, regardless of their historical grounding. Critics contend that the historical analysis mandated by Bruen is not genuinely driving the Court's decision-making, and that the Court should reconsider its precedent.