WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to a Hawaii law that restricts the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public.
The justices took up an appeal by three Hawaii residents with concealed carry licenses and a Honolulu-based gun rights advocacy group.
A lower court had previously determined that Hawaii’s measure likely complies with the US Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The Hawaii law requires concealed carry licensees to obtain an owner’s consent before bringing a handgun onto private property that is open to the public.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case during its new nine-month term that starts on Monday.
The court did not take up an aspect of the legal challenge focusing on the law’s provisions banning handguns at beaches, bars and other sensitive places.
The plaintiffs sued to challenge Hawaii’s restrictions weeks after Democratic Governor Josh Green signed the measure into law in 2023.
The challengers argued that the measure violates their Second Amendment rights among other things.
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely ruled against the plaintiffs, prompting their appeal to the Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump’s administration filed a Supreme Court brief backing the challengers in the case.
Alan Beck, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Hawaii’s law effectively bans the carry of firearms in metropolitan areas.
“I believe the Supreme Court will find this onerous law violates the Second Amendment,“ Beck said.
Neal Katyal, who represents Hawaii’s attorney general in the dispute, said they look forward to the Supreme Court’s consideration of this important case.
In a nation bitterly divided over how to address persistent firearms violence including frequent mass shootings, the Supreme Court often has taken an expansive view of Second Amendment protections.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, widened gun rights in three major rulings in 2008, 2010 and most recently in 2022.
The plaintiffs in the Hawaii case have cited that 2022 ruling’s holding that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense.
That landmark 6-3 decision, called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, was powered by the court’s six conservatives, over dissents from the three liberal justices.
The Bruen decision invalidated New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home.
In doing so, the court created a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying that restrictions must be consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The court in 2024 ruled 8-1 that a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns satisfied the court’s stringent history-and-tradition test. – Reuters