Supreme Court Strikes Down Hawaii's Concealed Carry Restriction

The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision on June 27, 2026, that Hawaii's requirement for licensed gun owners to obtain express permission before carrying firearms onto private property open to the public is unconstitutional. The case, Wolford v. Lopez, challenged the state's concealed-carry restriction. Attorney Kevin O'Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, criticized Hawaii's reliance on a Reconstruction-era Black Code to justify the law, stating it undermines Second Amendment rights. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, dismissed the historical law as a 'tainted artifact' aimed at disarming newly freed Black Americans. In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that the Court should have considered whether the Louisiana law itself violated the Second Amendment before excluding it from historical evidence. Critics of Jackson's dissent pointed out that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to address laws like the Black Codes that denied rights to Black Americans. The ruling allows businesses to enforce their own no-firearms policies but prohibits Hawaii from treating all businesses as off-limits to licensed gun owners without explicit permission.