Shawn Fleetwood writes for the Federalist about interesting action at the nation’s highest court.
The Democrat-run state of Hawaii received a brutal grilling from the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday for attempting to restrict their citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
The vigorous cross-examination came during oral arguments for Wolford v. Lopez, which centers around a legal challenge brought by Hawaii residents against a law restricting concealed carry throughout the state. As The Federalist previously reported, the statute criminalizes carrying a gun on private property open to the public unless the carrier receives “express authorization” to do so from the property’s owner, manager, or lessee.
Plaintiffs argued that the law attempts to “counteract” the high court’s 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision “by making the universe of places where a permit holder can actually carry a handgun exceptionally narrow.” As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd previously summarized, in Bruen, a majority of justices “ruled that New York’s policy, which granted state bureaucrats the authority to approve or reject certain individuals for licenses to carry based on subjective material, is wholly unconstitutional because it tramples on the Second Amendment rights of Americans.”
Those arguments appeared to be top of mind for many of the court’s Republican appointees during Tuesday’s hearing.
Throughout his line of questioning, Chief Justice John Roberts probed Hawaii’s attorney Neal Katyal about the Aloha State’s apparent willingness to treat Americans’ Second Amendment right as lesser than other constitutionally protected freedoms. He specifically highlighted concerns expressed in the court’s prior decisions that the Second Amendment has often been treated as a “disfavored” and “second-level right.”
“It strikes me that one of the things that your side of the case has to come to grips with is that it is a very clear constitutional right under the First Amendment if I, for example, as a candidate for office, want to walk up to your door on private property and knock on the door and say, ‘Here … give me your vote.’ That’s exercising a First Amendment right. But you say that it’s different when it comes to the Second Amendment,” Roberts said. “What exactly is the basis for the distinction?
