The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Wolford v. Lopez struck down Hawaii’s rule that required licensed gun owners to get express permission before carrying on private property open to the public, and the case exposed a raw debate about how to treat Reconstruction-era Black Codes when deciding modern Second Amendment questions. Attorneys for the challengers blasted the state for leaning on a post-Civil War Louisiana law aimed at disarming newly freed Black Americans, while the majority labeled that history tainted and unusable under the Bruen framework. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the Court skipped a threshold constitutional question, and conservative voices pushed back hard in favor of the Court’s approach. The ruling leaves room for businesses to bar firearms by clear notice, but it rejects a blanket rule that every business is off-limits unless the owner says otherwise.
The Court held that Hawaii cannot treat every publicly open private business as off-limits to licensed carriers unless the owner explicitly permits guns, dismantling what challengers called the vampire rule. In a 6-3 decision, the majority made clear that licensed, law-abiding citizens do not need an invitation from every store to exercise their rights in public-facing private spaces. That change restores a predictable rule for lawful carriers while leaving ordinary property rights intact when owners post a no firearms policy.
Kevin O’Grady, who represented the plaintiffs, did not pull punches about the state’s historical defense. “It is disgraceful that any state would rely on a law specifically aimed at taking away the Second Amendment rights or any constitutional right of Black Americans as it was at that time,” he said, and he added, “And it’s not surprising, however, that Hawaii would rely on it as they are diametrically opposed to the Second Amendment. We fully expected that the Supreme Court would identify that as the kind of law that one absolutely should not look to determine whether or not something is constitutional because this is the perfect example of something which is not constitutional.”
The Bruen test has forced courts to look to historical tradition when reviewing gun laws, and Hawaii leaned on an 1865 Louisiana statute from the Black Codes as its proof. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, rejected that move, calling the Louisiana statute a “tainted artifact” enacted to disarm newly freed Black Americans. The majority concluded such a law cannot be treated as reliable evidence of the Second Amendment’s original public meaning, since it was designed to suppress rights rather than reflect a neutral tradition of regulation.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took a different, procedural angle in her dissent and said the Court short circuited a necessary constitutional analysis. “It might well be that the Black Codes are invalid inputs for Bruen’s test,” Jackson wrote, “but only if they violated the Second Amendment — which may or may not be the case.” She argued the Court should have first decided whether those laws themselves were unconstitutional or whether their enforcement was the real problem. “Either history does matter, and if so, all potentially relevant historical experiences must be thoroughly examined,” she wrote. “Or, it does not, and the Court should just admit that the test it has created is boundless.”
That view drew swift pushback from conservative advocates who see the Fourteenth Amendment as the constitutional fix for exactly these kinds of racist statutes. “I would simply point her to what Justice Alito pointed out in the majority ruling — it was in response to these types of laws that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted,” said Hannah Hill of the National Association of Gun Rights. “That right there is your answer,” Hill continued. “Yes, there was a historical tradition — they enacted a constitutional amendment to fix that deprivation of rights, and that is also in the Constitution now, so I think she should probably go back to law school.”
Tyler Yzaguirre of the Second Amendment Institute echoed the criticism, stressing the Louisiana laws were not legitimate constitutional touchstones. “Those laws were not legitimate expressions of our Nation’s constitutional tradition; they were examples of government using its power to deprive Americans of a fundamental right,” Yzaguirre told Fox News Digital. “The Court was right to reject the notion that such laws could define the historical limits of the Second Amendment.”
The practical upshot is straightforward: businesses can still post and enforce no-gun policies, but states cannot treat every business as forbidden ground unless the owner gives express permission. The decision reinforces individual rights for licensed, law-abiding people while preserving ordinary private property rules when owners clearly and publicly bar firearms. That balance reflects the Court’s effort to return to historical meaning without letting racist, oppressive statutes guide constitutional interpretation.
