Case: Jason Wolford, et al. v. Anne E. Lopez, Attorney General of Hawaii, No. 24-1046
Lower Court: Ninth Circuit
Docketed: 2025-04-03
Status: Granted
Question Presented: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33 (2022), holds that "the Second Amendment guarantees a general right to public carry" of arms, meaning ordinary, law-abiding citizens may "'bear' arms in public for self-defense." In this case, the Ninth Circuit sustained a Hawaii law that makes it a crime for a concealed carry permit holder to carry a handgun on private property unless he has been "given express authorization to carry a firearm on the property by the owner,...
On January 20, 2026, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Wolford v. Lopez, with the United States participating as amicus curiae through Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris. The Court’s January 9 order granting the Solicitor General’s motion for divided argument time signals the federal government’s considered interest in how lower courts apply Bruen’s text-history-tradition test to state carry restrictions.
The case arises from a Ninth Circuit decision upholding two categories of Hawaii restrictions: a “default-off” rule making it a crime to carry on private property without express owner permission, and a set of location-specific bans. The Ninth Circuit sustained those bans by relying solely on post-Reconstruction era laws. That methodological choice placed the Ninth Circuit in direct conflict with the Second Circuit, which struck down an identical private-property rule in Antonyuk v. James, and with several other circuits that require primary focus on Founding-era tradition.
The central legal question is whether Bruen’s historical inquiry permits courts to anchor Second Amendment analysis in post-Reconstruction sources, or whether Founding-era evidence must carry the greater weight. The breadth of the circuit conflict explains why the Court granted certiorari and why 35 amicus briefs were filed. Property law professors filed a brief on December 29 arguing that private property rights independently support Hawaii’s default-off rule, adding a distinct doctrinal thread the Court may need to address.
The decision will clarify how much historical distance from 1791 a state may travel when defending carry restrictions. For practitioners and scholars tracking Bruen’s implementation, the case represents the Court’s most direct opportunity to discipline the lower courts’ divergent historical methodologies since Bruen itself was decided.