Supreme Court rules for challenge to Hawaii handgun limits

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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court sided on Thursday with a gun-rights advocacy group and other challengers to a Hawaii law restricting the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public, like most businesses, without the owner’s permission.

The justices, in a 6-3 decision, overturned a lower court’s decision that Hawaii’s Democratic-backed measure likely complied with the U.S. Constitution‘s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It marked the latest ruling on gun rights by the justices. The challenge was backed by President Donald Trump’s administration at the Supreme Court.

Under the Hawaii law, gun owners are required to get a property owner’s “express authorization” before bringing a handgun onto private property open to the public. Several other U.S. states have similar laws.

Three Hawaii residents with concealed-carry licenses and a Honolulu-based gun-rights advocacy group sued to challenge the Hawaii law weeks after Democratic Governor Josh Green signed it in 2023.

Hawaii officials contended that the law struck a proper balance between the right to bear arms and the right of property owners to exclude guns from their property.

In a nation bitterly divided over how to address persistent firearms violence including frequent mass shootings, the Supreme Court often has taken an expansive view of Second Amendment protections including in major rulings in 2008, 2010 and 2022.

The challengers in the Hawaii case cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in a case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that found that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense.

The Bruen decision invalidated New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home. In doing so, the court created a test for assessing firearms laws, saying they must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” not simply advance an important government interest.

A federal judge preliminarily blocked Hawaii’s restrictions. But the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely ruled against the law’s challengers, prompting their Supreme Court appeal.

The Supreme Court did not take up an aspect of the legal challenge that focused on the law’s provisions banning the carrying of handguns at beaches, bars and other sensitive places.

The Hawaii case was not the only important Second Amendment case decided by the Supreme Court during its current term. The justices on June 18 limited the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, rejecting a position taken by the Trump administration that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.

The court last year upheld a federal regulation targeting largely untraceable “ghost guns,” finding the measure to be consistent with a 1968 federal law. Ghost gun products are typically purchased online and may be quickly assembled at home, without the serial numbers ordinarily used to trace guns or background checks on purchasers required for other firearms. That case was not decided on Second Amendment grounds.

Reporting by John Kruzel; editing by Will Dunham.