DOJ Urges Supreme Court to Hear Hawaii ‘Gun-Free Zone’ Case

by Stephen Gutowski, The Reload, May 1, 2025

The Department of Justice (DOJ) took the unusual step of asking the Supreme Court to take up a Second Amendment case in which the Federal Government is not a party.

On Thursday, the DOJ said The Court should weigh in on whether Hawaii’s ban on carrying guns in publicly accessible private property is Constitutional. It argued the prohibition violates the Second Amendment and is an affront to the 2022 landmark ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. DOJ said the Supreme Court should accept the case and strike down that section of the state’s gun-carry law.

“The Second Amendment, which binds the States by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, provides: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,'” D. John Sauer, the current Solicitor General, wrote in Wolford v. Hawaii. “In NYSRPA v. Bruen, this Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees ordinary Americans a ‘general right to publicly carry firearms’ for lawful purposes such as self-defense. As eight judges correctly recognized in dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Hawaii’s private-property default rule violates—in fact, functionally eliminates— that right.”

The move boosts the odds that the Supreme Court will take up the case, which could eliminate one of the primary responses that states with stricter gun laws have adopted in the wake of the Bruen ruling. It comes after DOJ asked The Court not to take up challenges to the gun ban for non-violent felons and other prohibited persons. The move provides further insight into the Trump Administration’s view of the Second Amendment and the legal fights surrounding it.

read … FULL REPORT