Supreme Court weighs private property gun restrictions in major case

Amna Nawaz:

Today, the Supreme Court heard the latest case that's testing the limits of the constitutional right to carry a gun in America.

As William Brangham reports, today's argument centered on one strict state law aimed at preventing gun violence.

William Brangham:

Today's argument centered around a political clash over a Hawaii gun law. In that state, gun owners are prohibited from carrying firearms on private property that's open to the public, such as hotels, beaches, or stores, unless the property owner explicitly permits it, otherwise, no guns allowed.

Three gun-owning residents challenged that law, saying it goes farther than the legal limits about where the government can bar firearms.

So, for more on today's arguments, I am joined now by Chip Brownlee. He's a reporter with The Trace, which is a nonprofit news organization that covers gun violence.

Chip, thanks so much for being here.

Let's talk about this Hawaii law. Let's say I'm a concealed-carry permit owner in Hawaii. I want to go to the beach or a mall. The law says what?

Chip Brownlee, The Trace:

The law says that you would have to get permission from the owner of that property to bring your concealed-carry gun with you there.

And what that would look like in practice is the probably the owner of such establishment would have to post a sign saying we allow guns, or you would have to get the verbal consent from the owner, the provider or a representative to bring your gun there. So you could imagine it being a restaurant that has a sign that says "We allow guns."

And this is kind of opposed to what is typical in the rest of the country. In most of the country, it's the opposite. For a restaurant to exclude guns, they have to post a sign that says "No guns allowed." Or if you're going to an arena, they have to have signs posted to say "No guns here."

That's in the majority of the country. But in Hawaii and four other states, they have flipped this default to require the owner to give express permission.

William Brangham:

I see.

So is that why this has become such a significant Second Amendment case?

Chip Brownlee:

This really goes back to 2022 when the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision expanding gun rights across the country in a case called Bruen.

And in direct response to that case, states passed these laws like what Hawaii has trying to effectively limit the number of public spaces that -- where guns are allowed. And they did this by changing the default on these -- private property.

Now, this case is specifically about private property that's open to the public, so, again, like a business. This is not about government property. This is not really about your private home or inside of your home or fenced-off land. This is about private property that you can -- actually are invited to come to.

William Brangham:

I see.

And, today, the justices, they took two very different approaches to this. I want to play a little bit of sound. First, this is Justice Samuel Alito, who was questioning the very need for the law itself.

Samuel Alito, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice:

So what then is the big deal about this statute? Why does it matter if store owners and owners of private property that are generally open to the public don't like guns? Why is it a big deal to say they want people carrying guns to stay out, just put up a sign? Why does Hawaii have to have this law?

William Brangham:

But then the court's liberal justices, including Sonia Sotomayor, focused more on the rights of property owners. Here's what she said.

Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice:

Is there a constitutional right to enter private property with a gun without an owner's express or implicit consent? The answer has to be simply no. You can't own -- enter an owner's property without their consent, correct, express or implicit.

William Brangham:

I know it's always a bad idea to try to handicap what's going to happen by listening to the arguments, but did you get a sense today how this might go down?

Chip Brownlee:

You know, if I had to guess, I would say that it's going to split down party lines. I mean, you heard from those questions from Justice Alito and from the other justices that the conservatives are really -- seem like they're going to strike down the Hawaii law.

And the liberals, perhaps unsurprisingly, seem like they're going to uphold the law. But I think one thing that this really gets at is, this case could have implications for the whole country, but particularly like in a place in Hawaii, where they have not had guns really for most of their history, until 2022, when the Supreme Court changed this law, and are bringing a whole new set of guns and expectations into a state that hasn't really had guns.

That's why I think this matters to people in Hawaii. But this could have implications for the rest of the country too, because if the Supreme Court issues a broad decision that changes the gun law test again, they could have -- spell trouble for other types of gun laws that are not just this particular case about private property open to the public.

William Brangham:

And this isn't the only major gun case that the Supreme Court is going to hear this term.

Justices are going to soon hear arguments in a case involving the federal statute that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who is -- quote -- "in an unlawful" -- "is an unlawful user or addicted to any controlled substance."

It seems that the court now is eager to start taking up gun rights cases again.

Chip Brownlee:

I think one thing that's really important to remember is that, for most of its several-hundred-year history, the Supreme Court never really weighed in on the Second Amendment or Second Amendment rights.

It wasn't until 2008 in a case called Heller that the Supreme Court really started weighing in on the Second Amendment. And then it went into another decade, essentially, without really changing that precedent that it laid out in Heller.

And then, in 2022, we start getting this wave of Second Amendment cases. We got Bruen, which expanded the right to carry guns in public, Rahimi, which walked that back a little bit. And now we have two cases this term. So this really is a Supreme Court that seems more engaged on the issue of the Second Amendment than ever, really.

William Brangham:

All right, that is Chip Brownlee of The Trace.

Thank you so much for being here.

Chip Brownlee:

Thank you so much for having me.