Supreme Court will hear challenge to Hawaii gun law during new term
The Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear a challenge to Hawaii’s limits on where people can carry firearms, a case that could have significant implications for gun rights and restrictions across the country.
By accepting the firearms case, the justices added a major Second Amendment-related challenge to the court’s new term, which begins Monday. This term, which will end next summer, is already set to delve into high-profile issues including President Donald Trump’s actions in office, transgender rights and elections.
Under Hawaii law, people are prohibited from carrying guns onto someone else’s private property without that person’s consent. The state also forbids guns in public parks and beaches, government buildings, and bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
Hawaii’s law was adopted in 2023, a year after the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision expanding gun rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, the high court required the government to cite historical analogues while defending laws imposing gun restrictions. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said government officials had to show that their gun regulations were “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition.”
The decision set off a spate of challenges to firearm restrictions across the country, as well as confusion about how to apply the Supreme Court’s decision.
Hawaii officials said they adopted their gun restrictions to abide by the Bruen ruling. But challengers to Hawaii’s law—including three Maui residents with concealed-carry permits and a gun rights group—said the restrictions were crafted “specifically to negate” Bruen.
The group challenging Hawaii’s law wrote in court papers that an appeals court upheld “Hawaii’s near-universal restriction on handgun carry” among people with permits to carry concealed firearms who want to access property otherwise open to the public. The appeals court, they said, “permitted Hawaii to eviscerate the Second Amendment right Bruen recognized.”
The Trump administration has backed the challenge to Hawaii’s law. The Justice Department said that under the law, property owners have to expressly make clear that they allow guns, such as by posting signs announcing that fact.
“Because most property owners do not post signs either allowing or forbidding guns, Hawaii’s default rule functions as a near-complete ban on public carry,” the Justice Department wrote.
Alan Beck, an attorney for the group challenging the law, said Hawaii’s measure is overly onerous because of this burden it imposes on businesses. Beck said he had heard from multiple businesses that support and welcome people carrying guns but worry that posting signs saying so would hurt their bottom line.
“Especially in a state like Hawaii, where so much of [the] revenue is from tourism,” Beck said. “It’s a politically charged statement, to put up a sign saying, ‘guns allowed.’ That’s just the reality.”
Beck said that if the restrictions on private property are struck down, people could be able to carry guns in more places, including coffee shops and department stores.
Hawaii officials and their attorneys have said the state’s rules are constitutional. They wrote in court filings that “open carry has never been the default” in Hawaii.
Because Hawaii long had restrictions about weapons being carried in public spaces, they wrote, property owners were able to assume “firearms would not be carried onto their property, even if it was open to the public.”
“There can be no dispute that a private property owner has the right to exclude a person from her property because the person is carrying a gun, even if she has otherwise opened her property to the public,” they wrote.
The office of Hawaii’s attorney general did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the challenge.
“We look forward to the Supreme Court’s consideration of this important case,” Neal Katyal, an attorney representing that office, said in a statement Friday.
The justices will begin the term Monday by hearing oral arguments in a case dealing with a defendant’s right to consult an attorney during a criminal trial and another on procedures for medical malpractice cases.
The first major case of the term comes Tuesday, when the justices will consider a challenge to Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors, which seeks to change the identity or behavior of gay and transgender teens.
Later in the term, the justices will tackle multiple high-profile challenges to Trump’s initiatives during his second administration, including his sweeping imposition of tariffs and his push to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
The justices met this week for their “long conference.” During this gathering, which marks the unofficial start of the new term, the justices consider petitions for hundreds of cases that accumulated during the summer recess.
They met on Monday, and on Friday morning the justices announced they had decided to take the Hawaii challenge along with a handful of other cases.
The other cases included two dealing with technical aspects of lawsuits brought by U.S. companies seeking redress for property worth tens of millions of dollars that was seized by Cuba during Fidel Castro’s rule. The justices also accepted a case centering on a home that was foreclosed in Michigan to satisfy tax debt and whether the government’s actions in taking and selling that property were constitutional.
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