California Gun Law Case Reopened After Supreme Court Ruling

A legal challenge to California’s sweeping restrictions on licensed concealed carry has been revived following a major Supreme Court ruling protecting the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for self-defense.

The California case, May v. Bonta, was reopened July 15 after previously being stayed while the Supreme Court considered a closely related Hawaii law in Wolford v. Lopez.

The development illustrates how the Court’s latest Second Amendment decision could affect gun-control laws well beyond Hawaii.

The California Rifle and Pistol Association and several other gun-rights organizations brought the lawsuit against Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta. They are challenging portions of California Senate Bill 2, which designated numerous locations as “sensitive places” where licensed concealed-carry permit holders generally cannot carry firearms.

California’s restrictions cover locations including parks, playgrounds, zoos, museums, stadiums, casinos, libraries, amusement parks and bars or restaurants serving alcohol.

The law also attempted to establish a presumption against carrying firearms on private property open to the public unless the owner expressly granted permission.

That provision closely resembled the Hawaii restriction invalidated by the Supreme Court.

In its June 25 decision in Wolford, the Court ruled 6-3 that Hawaii violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments by making most private businesses gun-free zones by default.

Hawaii’s Act 52 prohibited a licensed individual from carrying a firearm onto private property open to the public unless the property owner provided “express authorization.”

That meant permit holders could not lawfully enter routine locations such as stores, hotels, restaurants, gas stations and shopping centers while armed unless they first obtained affirmative permission.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the system imposed an unconstitutional burden on people who had already satisfied Hawaii’s demanding requirements for concealed-carry licenses.

“This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Alito wrote.

He emphasized that permit holders faced “severe restrictions on the daily activities of residents who have satisfied the State’s rigorous requirements for the issuance of a carry permit.”

Hawaii’s rule reversed the traditional understanding of how privately owned businesses open to the public operate.

Under the longstanding default, customers may enter a business unless the owner tells them otherwise. Property owners remain free to prohibit firearms, including through clearly posted signs, but the state cannot presume that guns are forbidden everywhere unless an owner affirmatively opts in.

“Under that rule, everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited,” Alito wrote.

Hawaii instead required licensed gun owners to assume they were prohibited from entering unless the property owner gave express permission.

“The effect of this new rule is to impose severe restrictions on the daily activities” of permit holders, Alito explained.

The majority concluded that Hawaii had failed to identify a sufficiently analogous historical tradition supporting such a broad default ban.

“The Second Amendment cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple in New York,” Alito wrote.

“Merely local attitudes can neither shrink nor inflate the meaning of fundamental Bill of Rights guarantees.”

The ruling followed the constitutional framework established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court’s landmark 2022 decision recognizing that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense.

Under Bruen, once a firearm restriction burdens conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s text, the government must demonstrate that its regulation is consistent with America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Hawaii failed to meet that burden, the majority concluded.

The Trump administration played a significant role in the victory.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed a brief supporting the challengers, and the administration participated in oral arguments before the Court. It maintained that Hawaii was attempting to circumvent Bruen by using a property-law presumption to make lawful public carry practically impossible.

The administration argued that constitutional rights cannot change depending on the political preferences of individual states.

The decision overturned the Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling on Hawaii’s private-property default and sent the case back for additional proceedings. On remand, the appeals court affirmed the preliminary injunction preventing Hawaii from enforcing that provision.

The Supreme Court’s ruling did not invalidate every “sensitive places” restriction contained in Hawaii or California law.

Its holding concerned the private-property default specifically. Courts must separately consider whether restrictions covering parks, museums, restaurants, stadiums and other locations are supported by a relevant historical tradition.

That distinction will be central as May v. Bonta resumes.

A federal district court initially blocked numerous California restrictions, including bans affecting hospitals, public transportation, parks, playgrounds, libraries, casinos, zoos, stadiums, museums, houses of worship and private businesses open to the public.

The Ninth Circuit later allowed several of those restrictions to take effect while leaving others blocked.

Now that Wolford has been decided, the California plaintiffs can return to court and argue that the reasoning used to invalidate Hawaii’s law also undermines portions of California’s regulatory scheme.

Gun-control supporters are expected to maintain that certain locations qualify as historically recognized sensitive places and that states retain authority to regulate firearm possession in crowded or potentially dangerous settings.

The challengers counter that California stretched the “sensitive places” concept so far that lawful concealed carry became effectively prohibited throughout much of ordinary public life.

The Supreme Court warned against that strategy in Bruen, explaining that governments cannot declare virtually all heavily populated areas sensitive and thereby eliminate the constitutional right to carry a firearm.

Private property owners still retain their own rights under Wolford. A business may prohibit firearms and direct armed visitors to leave.

What Hawaii and California cannot do, according to the challengers, is transform nearly every private business into a state-created gun-free zone unless its owner affirmatively chooses otherwise.

The reopening of May v. Bonta does not guarantee that every challenged California restriction will be overturned. It does, however, force the state to defend each provision under the Supreme Court’s history-and-tradition test.

For California’s licensed gun owners, that represents an important opportunity to challenge a law designed to make exercising a constitutional right extraordinarily difficult even after obtaining a permit.