Ketanji Brown Jackson melts down over SCOTUS ruling against Hawaii gun law: ‘The court’s objective is protecting guns’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled four years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen that the Second and 14th Amendments protect Americans’ right to carry handguns outside of their homes for self-defense.

Hawaii Democrats came up with an apparent workaround to curb gun rights in their state, passing a law in 2023 that banned the carrying of guns onto private property without verbal or written consent of the property owner. Those who ran afoul of this law faced up to a year in prison.

‘Hawaii’s law does not restrict the right to carry a gun at all,’ Jackson wrote.

This didn’t sit well with a trio of Maui County residents with concealed-carry permits who, with the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, sued on the basis of the understanding articulated again by Solicitor General D. John Sauer last year: “Because most property owners do not post signs either allowing or forbidding guns, Hawaii’s default rule functions as a near-complete ban on public carry.”

To the great chagrin of liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court determined in a 6-3 ruling on Thursday that Hawaii’s so-called “vampire law” is unconstitutional.

The court, which reversed a 2024 decision from the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Appeals Court, noted that law-abiding permit-holders “not only must … take care to avoid all the territory where the possession of a gun is prohibited outright, but they may also be barred from entering many places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines, such as gas stations, restaurants, and stores.”

While recognizing the right of establishments that are open to the public “to admit or exclude persons who are carrying guns for self-defense under either the common-law rule or Hawaii’s law,” the court noted that the so-called vampire law “flips the default rule at common law, under which anyone has an implied license to enter property held open to the public unless the property owner withdraws consent.”

Justice Samuel Alito noted in the opinion that the “regime” established in Hawaii “hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”

RELATED: ‘Shall not be infringed’ — even if you’re high, Supreme Court rules

Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Jackson was once again of a different mind than her conservative colleagues on the meaning of the “right to bear arms.”

At the outset of her dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson framed — in Orwellian fashion — Hawaii’s infringement on Americans’ constitutional rights as an effort to “protect the rights of its residents — both those who wish to carry guns and those who prefer that guns are not carried on their private property without their express permission.”

Jackson —who repeatedly stressed that she still disagrees with the decision in Bruen, calling it a “grave mistake” — claimed that “the court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law.”

According to Jackson, the vampire law that effectively requires law-abiding citizens to everywhere obtain consent before exercising their Second Amendment right not only “does not implicate the Second Amendment” — “Hawaii’s law does not restrict the right to carry a gun at all.”

The liberal justice apparently assigns state law and custom greater weight than federal law on the matter of guns, stressing that “recognizing state autonomy in this respect is especially appropriate here, since Hawaii has never had a custom of armed carry.”

Jackson concluded her 32-page dissent with yet another attack on her colleagues, writing, “While purporting to constrain judges, the majority has unmasked the discretionary choices that lie beneath the court’s decisions regarding which analogues are ‘vastly different’ … and whose historical experiences are worthy of inclusion.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a separate dissenting opinion.

This ruling will reportedly impact a handful of blue states, including New York, Maryland, and California, which took a similar approach to Hawaii.

John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said of the outcome, “Law-abiding gun owners will no longer be forced to beg for special permission simply to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in public places.”

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