Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not hold back. In a blistering dissent filed Wednesday, the Biden appointee accused her conservative colleagues of treating the Second Amendment as a battering ram against common-sense state regulation, warning that the Court's 6-3 ruling in Wolford v. Lopez will leave communities defenseless against gun violence. The conservative majority was unmoved. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for six justices, declared Hawaii's restrictive concealed-carry scheme unconstitutional and reversed the Ninth Circuit in a decision that gun-rights advocates are calling the most consequential Second Amendment win since Bruen.
The case centered on Hawaii's Act 52, a law that required licensed concealed-carry permit holders to obtain explicit, affirmative permission from a property owner before carrying a firearm onto any private property open to the public. In practice, that meant a licensed carrier could not walk into a grocery store, a restaurant, or a shopping mall while armed unless the business had posted a sign welcoming guns. Gun-rights litigants dubbed it the "vampire rule," because, like a vampire in folklore, a lawful carrier could not enter unless expressly invited.
Hawaii has long maintained some of the nation's strictest firearms laws. After the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen struck down New York's discretionary carry-permit regime, several blue states scrambled to find new ways to limit where permit holders could actually carry. Hawaii was among them.
As Alito wrote in the majority opinion, "Hawaii responded by replacing its old law on carry permits with new laws that achieved a similar result." The state enacted Act 52, which flipped the traditional default. Instead of presuming that a licensed carrier could bring a firearm into a business unless the owner posted a "no guns" sign, Hawaii required businesses to post affirmative "guns welcome" signs. Without that opt-in notice, carrying on the premises was a criminal offense.
The challengers argued that this scheme gutted the right recognized in Bruen by making it practically impossible to carry in most commercial settings. Few businesses, they contended, would bother posting pro-gun signage, especially in a state where political culture runs heavily against firearms ownership. The Ninth Circuit disagreed and upheld the law, prompting the Supreme Court to take the case.
Alito's opinion applied the historical-tradition test that Justice Clarence Thomas established in Bruen. Under that framework, a modern firearms regulation passes constitutional muster only if the government can point to a historical analogue from the founding era or the period surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification. Hawaii, represented by prominent Supreme Court advocate Neal Katyal, argued that its law fit within a long tradition of regulating firearms on private property.
The majority found that argument unpersuasive. Alito wrote that the opt-in consent requirement was "without historical support" and that the state could not repackage a government-imposed restriction as a matter of private property rights. National Review's Dan McLaughlin observed that "nobody in the 6-3 majority was fooled" by Hawaii's attempt to frame the mandate as merely protecting property owners' choices.
The opinion concluded with a direct declaration. Alito wrote:
"The Hawaii law at issue here violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Therefore, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the opinion in full. The ruling reinforces the principle Thomas articulated in Bruen: that the Second Amendment is "not a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees." The Washington Examiner noted that the decision builds directly on that framework, treating historical tradition as the controlling standard rather than the interest-balancing tests many lower courts had previously used.
Justice Jackson filed a separate dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan filed her own dissenting opinion. Together, the three liberal justices signaled deep frustration with the trajectory of the Court's Second Amendment case law.
Jackson's dissent, as the Daily Caller reported, took sharp aim at the majority for what she characterized as an aggressive expansion of gun rights at the expense of state authority. The Biden appointee has become increasingly vocal in her disagreements with the conservative bloc, a pattern visible across multiple areas of law this term.
Jackson has not limited her pointed rhetoric to gun cases. Earlier this term, she delivered a sharp rebuke of the conservative majority in a separate case touching on race and the Constitution, and she has clashed publicly with Alito on redistricting questions as well.
The dissent's core complaint was that the majority's historical-tradition test gives judges too little room to uphold modern gun regulations. Jackson argued that states like Hawaii face unique public-safety challenges and should retain broad latitude to decide where firearms may be carried. But the majority opinion rejected the idea that local culture or policy preferences can override a fundamental constitutional right. Alito specifically addressed Hawaii's invocation of its "spirit of Aloha," writing that such local attitudes cannot override fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees.
Wednesday's ruling is the latest in a string of decisions that have given teeth to the Bruen standard. Since 2022, lower courts have struggled with how strictly to apply the historical-tradition test, and several circuits have reached conflicting conclusions. Wolford v. Lopez narrows the room for disagreement.
The decision also arrives alongside a parallel development in the Fourth Circuit. In Kipke v. Moore, that court ruled that "Maryland's prohibition on carrying guns on private property held open to the public is unconstitutional," applying the same Bruen logic. Together, the two rulings send a clear warning to states that have tried to use property-based restrictions as a workaround for carry limitations the Supreme Court has already invalidated.
Just the News reported that the 6-3 split fell along strictly ideological lines, with the conservative majority and the three liberal dissenters reflecting the Court's deepening divide on firearms. That divide has become one of the sharpest fault lines on the current bench, rivaling disagreements over federal court jurisdiction and capital punishment.
In a notable twist, the current Department of Justice sided with the gun-rights challengers. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon celebrated the ruling, noting that the DOJ's Civil Rights office co-authored an amicus brief supporting the case. Fox News reported Dhillon's reaction:
"A great return to sanity and historical presumptions!"
The DOJ's involvement marks a stark departure from the Biden administration's posture on firearms litigation. Under President Biden, the Justice Department consistently filed briefs supporting state and federal gun restrictions. The Trump administration's DOJ has moved in the opposite direction, actively backing Second Amendment challenges in multiple pending cases.
Breitbart characterized the decision as the latest in a series of losses for states that tried to limit the practical reach of Bruen through creative legislative drafting. The outlet noted that Hawaii's law had been widely viewed as a test case for whether states could effectively nullify the right to carry by shifting the regulatory mechanism from outright bans to consent-based frameworks.
The ruling's immediate effect is straightforward: licensed concealed-carry holders in Hawaii may now carry firearms on private property open to the public without obtaining the property owner's advance permission. Property owners retain the right to post "no guns" signs and exclude firearms from their premises, but the default now favors the carrier, not the state.
The broader implications reach well beyond Hawaii. Several other states, including Maryland, New York, and New Jersey, have enacted similar restrictions in the wake of Bruen. Those laws now face serious constitutional exposure. The Fourth Circuit has already struck down Maryland's version. Challenges to comparable statutes in other jurisdictions are either pending or expected.
The Court's willingness to police post-Bruen workarounds suggests that the conservative majority will not tolerate attempts to hollow out the right it recognized four years ago. That posture puts states on notice: if a regulation achieves the same practical result as a law the Court has already invalidated, rebranding it will not save it.
The ideological battle lines on the bench remain fixed. The same 6-3 alignment that decided Bruen decided Wolford, and the liberal dissenters show no sign of softening their opposition. Justices have clashed repeatedly this term across a range of constitutional questions, and the Second Amendment has become one of the most heated battlegrounds.
Rare moments of cross-ideological agreement, such as when Kavanaugh authored an opinion reversing a death sentence over racial bias in jury selection, have done little to bridge the gap on firearms. On gun rights, the lines are drawn and neither side is giving ground.
For gun-rights advocates, Wolford v. Lopez is validation. For states that have spent the last four years searching for new ways to restrict carry rights, it is a warning. The Supreme Court is watching, and the conservative majority is not interested in clever workarounds.
When a state tells a licensed citizen that a constitutional right requires an invitation, the Court now has an answer. The Bill of Rights is not a guest list.
