Licensed gun owners in Hawaii could face criminal charges for carrying firearms at gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores under a state law the Justice Department is calling “blatantly unconstitutional,” setting up a Supreme Court fight that could affect millions of law-abiding residents in blue states.
The Justice Department has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting plaintiffs who are suing Hawaii over its new concealed-carry statute. The law makes it a misdemeanor to carry a firearm on any private property without “unambiguous written or verbal authorization” or where “clear and conspicuous signage” explicitly allows firearms on the premises.
“Hawaii’s law plainly violates the Second Amendment,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X as she announced the filing.
The central question in Wolford v. Lopez is “whether the Second Amendment allows states to make it unlawful for concealed-carry license-holders to carry firearms on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization,” according to the Justice Department’s brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.
The department argues that Hawaii’s law clashes with the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that strict permitting rules for concealed-carry licenses violated the Second Amendment.
Before Bruen, New York applicants, for example, had to show a “special need” for self-defense in public, such as documented threats or a job that required them to carry large sums of cash.
Read the brief:
According to the Justice Department, Hawaii’s post-Bruen law “effectively nullifies” the concealed-carry licenses that became more widely available after that ruling.
“They realized they couldn’t do anything about not providing concealed carry permits, so instead they just made it illegal to carry in certain areas,” said David Katz, a former DEA agent and federal firearms instructor who now serves as CEO of Global Security Group. “This is common to these anti-Second Amendment states.”
Katz, whose company is certified to teach concealed carry in New York and other states, argued that measures like Hawaii’s are intended to keep lawful public carry tightly restricted despite the Bruen decision — something the Justice Department highlighted in its filing.
“Hawaii’s restriction is blatantly unconstitutional as applied to private property open to the public,” the DOJ brief states. “States cannot evade Bruen by banning public carry through indirect means.”
Just as Bruen, which began as a New York case, reshaped similarly restrictive gun laws nationwide, the outcome of Wolford v. Lopez is expected to reverberate far beyond Hawaii.
“It’s not just Hawaii that is effectively banning public carry,” Bondi wrote on X. “California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York have similar laws. So a win in this case will restore Second Amendment rights for millions of Americans.”
The broader implications prompted swift reactions from Republican officials in heavily Democratic states.
Irina Vernikov, a New York City councilwoman who was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm after bringing a licensed handgun to a pro-Israel rally in 2023 amid rising antisemitic hate crimes, praised Bondi for stepping into the Hawaii case.
“It’s time for states like New York to stop acting like isolated nations that can ignore our federal law and the Constitution,” she told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “Every law-abiding citizen of this nation has the right to bear arms. Especially somewhere like New York, where Democrats in charge have enabled the worst kind of criminals to walk our streets, we must be able to arm ourselves for protection. I appreciate AG Pam Bondi and the DOJ for taking decisive action to protect our rights.”
The charges against Vernikov were ultimately dropped after investigators determined that the handgun in her waistband during the rally was not only unloaded, but had key components removed in advance, rendering it inoperable.
