Second-amendment law centers and advocacy groups praised the high court’s decision as another victory and an important step toward challenging firearm restrictions they argue are inconsistent with gun laws that existed at the nation’s founding. Gun control and gun violence prevention organizations lambasted the ruling as a dangerous one that prioritizes the rights of gun owners over public safety.
The case, Wolford v. Lopez, challenged a 2023 Hawaii law that prohibited concealed-carry permit holders from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public — including stores, restaurants, hotels, and malls — unless the property owner explicitly permitted it. Before Thursday’s decision, just five states — Hawaii, California, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey — required express permission before someone could enter private property with a gun. Those state laws are now void.
“The state can’t set the default rule,” Lawrence said. She noted that homeowners and business owners “still have the right to stop people from bringing firearms to their property.”
The ruling is limited in scope. It does not extend to public spaces that state or local governments have designated as sensitive places, such as parks, libraries, and schools. “It has no bearing on sensitive-places law,” Lawrence said. “That is still the status quo.”
But legal analysts said the practical consequences for business owners are significant. Before the ruling, Hawaii’s default position was that guns were banned on private property unless the owner gave express permission to carry. Now the default is reversed: unless carrying is explicitly banned, guns are permitted.
Jeffrey Fagan, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, said the decision places owners of businesses such as malls and hardware stores — run by private companies but open to the public — in a difficult position. Business owners will have to make their position on gun-carrying clear, which risks alienating customers who may want to carry a firearm inside and those who do not want to be in the same space with guns.
“The rules about carrying in private property are thrown into question,” Fagan said.
The Wolford ruling is the second time this month the Supreme Court has struck down a firearms policy based on the precedent set by its 2022 Bruen decision, which requires gun laws to have a historical twin. In the recent Hemani decision, the court sided with a Texas gun owner who argued that the federal law banning gun ownership among anyone who uses drugs illegally violates the Second Amendment.
Lawrence said she expects the court to begin tackling more cases that make owning and carrying a gun easier for legal owners. She said that could include challenges to bans on assault weapons, restrictions on magazines that carry more than 10 rounds, and laws around who can possess a gun and where they can carry it — what she described as the “who, what and where” of gun laws.
“It certainly gives a look at where the court is going,” Lawrence said. She pointed to Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in the Hawaii case, which discussed the “cumulative burden” that the state’s firearms law imposed. “The extensive references reflect that the court is thinking about this in a cumulative sense,” she said. “So if there is an undue burden on Second Amendment rights it will be struck down.”
While the ruling does not spell a total end to prohibiting guns in public and private spaces, Lawrence said it is another step toward the conservative justices’ goal of undoing laws that burden gun owners, as the one in Hawaii did. Individual property owners, she emphasized, still retain the right to decide if they want guns on their premises — but the state can no longer set that default for them.