On Thursday, Attorney General Steve Marshall celebrated what he called a "Big win for the Second Amendment," in a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (SOTUS) in the case Wolford v. Lopez.
"SCOTUS has spoken, the right to carry is the law of the land," Marshall wrote in a social media post. "Alabama joined an amicus brief opposing Hawaii's unconstitutional carry ban. As SCOTUS put it, the 2nd Amendment cannot give way to "the spirit of Aloha" and applies the same in all 50 states."
The question before the court, according to the amicus brief Marshall referenced, was whether Hawaii's law that banned individuals exercising their Second Amendment rights in what the state declared "sensitive places," including parks, beaches, bars, and restaurants serving alcohol, and declared "the default rule for public carry on private property held open to the public. Rather than presuming that public carry was permissible unless expressly forbidden, public carry is now presumptively forbidden in Hawaii unless expressly permitted," was legal.
In his 24-page opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law "hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives." In his opinion, he describes a hypothetical young woman in fear for her life, carrying a firearm for self-defense purposes, and the way in which the law would criminalize her right to that defense, going about ordinary daily tasks, including running errands.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, provides another example.
"Consider how Hawaii and the principal dissent's argument would play out in another context. What if a State made it a crime to wear religious head garb (say, a hijab) onto private property open to the public without obtaining express authorization? Could that statute evade constitutional scrutiny? On Hawaii and the principal dissent's logic, the answer is apparently yes: No one has the right to enter another's property without permission, and the State has merely adjusted the default to require permission to be clear. But that is plainly wrong. Because the law regulates religious and expressive conduct, its enactment is state action that triggers First Amendment scrutiny," Barrett explained.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined in a dissent, arguing that the case was about property rights with no Second Amendment implications. Justice Elena Kagan argued that historic precedent supported the state's argument.
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