WASHINGTON \u2014 A majority of Supreme Court justices on Tuesday indicated that a Hawaii gun law that limits people carrying firearms onto private property infringes on the constitutionally protected right to bear arms.<\/p>\n
The measure has been dubbed the \u201cvampire rule<\/a>\u201d because, as with the fictional creatures in folk tales and the novel \u201cDracula,\u201d it requires people with concealed carry permits to seek permission before entering private property open to the public.<\/p>\n Members of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, who regularly back gun rights, suggested during oral argument that the requirement violates the Constitution\u2019s Second Amendment right to bear arms.<\/p>\n “You are just regulating the Second Amendment to second-class status,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito told Hawaii’s lawyer, Neal Katyal.<\/p>\n Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another conservative, expressed that it was a “pretty simple” case because, as required under recent Supreme Court precedent, Hawaii could not show there was a significant history and tradition of similar laws curbing gun rights.<\/p>\n The conservative justices did not appear interested in Hawaii’s focus on private property rights, with Chief Justice John Roberts making a comparison with hypothetical laws that might restrict free speech under the First Amendment on private property. <\/p>\n There is, for example, a “clear constitutional right” under the First Amendment for political candidates to be able to knock on someone’s door, he noted. “But you say that it’s different when it comes to the Second Amendment,” he told Katyal. “What exactly is the basis for the distinction?”<\/p>\n Although in most states the law assumes that people can enter private properties while armed if they have a concealed carry permit, several states<\/a> have joined Hawaii in flipping that rule. The others are New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California.<\/p>\n The Hawaii measure, enacted in 2023 as part of a broader gun law, concerns a host of private properties that are generally open to the public, such as gas stations, stores and restaurants. Lower courts have partly blocked other provisions of the law that impose different restrictions on where people can take guns.<\/p>\n People who violate the private property provision can face up to a year in prison.<\/p>\n The law was challenged by three gun owners with concealed carry licenses, Maui residents Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford and Atom Kasprzycki, as well as the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a gun rights group. The Trump administration has filed a brief<\/a> backing the challengers.<\/p>\n A federal judge earlier blocked the private property provision, but the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the state\u2019s favor in a September 2024 ruling.<\/p>\n Gun rights advocates say the \u201cvampire rule\u201d effectively nullifies the right to carry a firearm in public, which the Supreme Court endorsed in a major 2022 ruling <\/a>that found for the first time that the right to bear arms under the Constitution\u2019s Second Amendment extends outside the home. That ruling requires those defending gun restrictions to show there is a history and tradition of such regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cHawaii\u2019s intent to eliminate the right to carry is both self-evident and illegitimate,\u201d lawyers for the challengers said in court papers.<\/p>\n Hawaii and gun control advocates stress the state\u2019s separate interest in protecting property rights, which are also enshrined in the Constitution.<\/p>\n \u201cSince our founding as a nation, private property rights have been foundational to American identity and embedded throughout our system of government and our Constitution,\u201d Douglas Letter, chief legal officer at the gun control group Brady, told reporters last week.<\/p>\n The 2022 Supreme Court ruling led both to a surge of new gun laws being passed and a wave of new challenges to long-standing firearms restrictions.<\/p>\n In its most recent Second Amendment case, the court in 2024<\/a> appeared to backtrack somewhat on that 2022 ruling, upholding a federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.<\/p>\n