The highest court in the country heard oral arguments Tuesday morning for a case brought against the state by three Maui residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition.
The Supreme Court will decide in the coming months on Wolford v. Lopez, a case challenging a 2023 Hawaiʻi law that bans firearms by default on private property.
Gov. Josh Green told HPR that he and Attorney General Anne Lopez would “push back hard” on lawsuits challenging the state’s gun laws.
Legal scholars are split over Wolford v. Lopez, and they say the Supreme Court’s decision could go either way — but the justices appeared skeptical of the state’s arguments Tuesday.
The Conversation spoke with a Second Amendment scholar about the case. Hayley Lawrence is the executive director for the Center for Firearms Law at Duke Law School.
“I think there's perhaps a misconception or just a lack of understanding that Second Amendment jurisprudence has a long history,” she said.
Lawrence said the Supreme Court did not hear its first case on the Second Amendment until 1870, and went a long time before being presented with questions about the amendment again.
“There's a lot of regulation and historical laws that we'll talk about in the case of Wolford v. Lopez that judges and advocates pull from to interpret the Second Amendment. But this is a really new field for so many of us, and there are so many open questions that the court has yet to opine on.”
At issue is a Hawaiʻi law that prohibits people from carrying a firearm onto private property without express permission from the property owner or their agent. Those challenging the law argue that it violates their Second Amendment right to public carry and self-defense.
“Petitioners don't dispute the validity of the law as it applies to private property owners or private property that isn't held open to the public,” Lawrence said. “They're challenging it as to going to the grocery store or going to any number of businesses or property that is otherwise private but held open to the public.”
Lawrence told HPR that the question will be whether the court thinks about this case as a property owner's right to exclude, or as a public carry case.
“Petitioners, on the one hand, those are the folks from Maui County who are challenging the law, say that this is a case about the right to public carry, the right to go into a store as long as they have a concealed carry permit, and to defend themselves with their firearm in public," she said.
"The state, on the other hand, says this law was passed in order to vindicate property owners' rights, and that means enforcing by potential criminal penalties, the right to exclude, or the default setting to exclude anyone from property who has come armed with a firearm.”
If the law is overturned, Lawrence said it would presume that an individual can go into a store or other private property held open to the public and lawfully carry a concealed firearm unless the owner has a sign that specifically states that it is not allowed.
The Conversation checked in with Lawrence again Tuesday. She said oral arguments went largely as expected, with several justices critical of the state’s case.
This story aired on The Conversation on Jan. 20, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
