The Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii gun law and narrowed a federal firearms ban on drug users in back-to-back rulings, extending the reach of its 2022 landmark decision and signaling that even bigger Second Amendment fights lie ahead.
The Hawaii case, Wolford v. Lopez, fell 6-3 along ideological lines. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the conservative majority, held that Hawaii's requirement forcing licensed concealed-carry permit holders to get a property owner's explicit permission before bringing a handgun onto private property open to the public, stores, hotels, gas stations, violated both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined the opinion.
The week before, the full court unanimously limited a decades-old federal law that barred certain drug users from possessing firearms, a decision with direct consequences for millions of Americans who use marijuana and own guns.
Both rulings applied the same constitutional test: the framework Justice Clarence Thomas established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, which requires any gun regulation to be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Hawaii's law could not clear that bar. Neither could the federal drug-user ban as broadly applied.
Hawaii enacted Act 52 in 2023. Under it, a gun owner carrying a lawful concealed-carry permit still could not walk into a shop, a bank, or a hotel with a firearm unless the property owner gave verbal consent or posted a sign explicitly allowing weapons. Three Maui residents sued that same year, arguing the default ban gutted the right the court had just recognized in Bruen.
Their attorney, Alan Beck, put it bluntly during litigation: "If the default rule regarding private property can be enforced, the Second Amendment right to carry firearms for self-defense will effectively be eviscerated."
Hawaii officials countered that the law "had struck a proper balance between the right to bear arms and the right of property owners to exclude guns from their property." They even cited a prohibition on deadly weapons issued by King Kamehameha III before Hawaii became a state. The court was unpersuaded.
Justice Alito's majority opinion left no room for regional carve-outs, as Newsmax reported:
"The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States... It cannot give way to 'the spirit of Aloha' in Hawaii."
The practical fallout extends well beyond the islands. Four other Democratic-led states, California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, have similar laws on the books. All now face serious constitutional exposure.
John Commerford of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action framed the result in plain terms: "Law-abiding gun owners will no longer be forced to beg for special permission simply to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in public places."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a sharp dissent, accusing her conservative colleagues of warping the Bruen framework beyond recognition. She charged that the majority had "manipulated" the test "into a free-for-all that lets the judiciary thwart the will of legislatures by privileging access to firearms above all else."
It is a familiar posture from Jackson. She has emerged as the liberal wing's most vocal critic of the court's direction on constitutional questions this term, filing fierce dissents in case after case where the 6-3 conservative majority has drawn clear lines.
Senator Chuck Schumer echoed Jackson's tone from the Capitol, calling the ruling the work of a "MAGA Supreme Court" that "has once again put the gun lobby ahead of American lives." The remark illustrates a growing pattern among Democratic leaders: when the court enforces the text of the Second Amendment, the response is not a legal counter-argument but a political slogan.
Since Thomas authored Bruen four years ago, only one gun regulation has survived the test at the Supreme Court level. That was U.S. v. Rahimi in 2024, an 8-1 decision upholding the federal ban on firearms possession by individuals under domestic violence restraining orders. The court found that disarming people who pose a demonstrated danger to others fits squarely within the nation's historical tradition.
David Kopel, a Second Amendment scholar at the libertarian Independence Institute, drew a clear distinction between Rahimi and the two new rulings. He noted that "the broad historic traditions invoked by Bruen point towards a dangerousness standard as the rule for when some Americans can be disarmed."
Peaceable gun owners, including those who use marijuana, do not meet that standard, Kopel argued: "Peaceable people who use marijuana, and persons with concealed-carry permits, are not dangerous."
That logic matters. It draws a bright line between regulations aimed at genuinely dangerous individuals and regulations that burden the rights of law-abiding citizens for no demonstrable safety gain. The court appears to agree.
Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine University's Caruso School of Law, offered a broader assessment of where the doctrine now stands. He told Just The News that the two new cases "confirm the court's extreme skepticism about all manner of gun regulations, especially new ones."
"It has created and elaborated a test that makes it exceedingly difficult for legislatures to create gun laws to protect their citizens."
Charles went further: "The court's doctrine has elevated the Second Amendment right far above a first-class right." Whether one views that as vindication or overreach depends on how seriously one takes the plain text of the amendment, "shall not be infringed."
The court's work on firearms is far from finished. On the same day as the Hawaii ruling, the justices held their weekly private conference to consider whether to take up challenges to state bans on assault-style rifles like the AR-15 and restrictions on large-capacity ammunition magazines. They are also weighing a challenge to the federal ban on licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to adults under 21.
Any of those cases could be accepted as soon as Monday for the term that begins in October.
Justice Kavanaugh has already tipped his hand. When the court turned away similar AR-15 and magazine appeals last year, three conservative justices dissented. Kavanaugh expressed sympathy toward the challengers, stating that AR-15s are in common use by "law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment." He added that the court "presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon."
Stephen Stamboulieh, an attorney for Gun Owners of America, said "it's past time for the court to enforce" its prior rulings against such bans. He put the stakes in direct terms:
"It is critical that the Supreme Court take an AR-15 and magazine case and end the lower courts' rebellion against the court's precedents."
That word, "rebellion", captures a real frustration among Second Amendment advocates. Multiple lower courts have upheld state-level rifle and magazine bans using reasoning that appears to sidestep or narrow Bruen, prompting accusations that some federal judges are slow-walking compliance with the Supreme Court's own framework.
The current term has already produced a string of consequential 6-3 rulings across constitutional and statutory questions. If the court grants review in an AR-15 case, the next term could produce the most significant firearms decision since Bruen itself.
The immediate, concrete effect of Wolford v. Lopez is straightforward: in Hawaii and potentially in California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York, licensed gun owners may now carry firearms onto private property open to the public unless the property owner specifically posts a prohibition. The default flipped. Permission is no longer required. A sign banning guns still works, but silence now means the right stands.
The drug-user ruling, meanwhile, narrows a federal statute that had exposed millions of marijuana-using gun owners to potential felony prosecution. In states where marijuana is legal, gun owners who use it no longer face the same federal threat, at least not under the broad reading the government had pressed.
Together, the two decisions reinforce a pattern. The court's conservative majority treats the Second Amendment as it reads: an individual right that does not bend to the policy preferences of state legislatures or federal prosecutors unless those restrictions track a genuine historical tradition rooted in public safety.
Critics call that framework rigid. Supporters call it constitutional. What no one can call it anymore is ambiguous. The court has now applied the Bruen test repeatedly, and the results run in one direction.
When the text of the Constitution keeps winning and legislators keep losing, the problem is not with the court. It is with the laws.