The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a defendant’s Second Amendment challenge to Hawaii laws that make it a crime to carry handguns or ammunition in public without a license.
In written statements, three of the court’s conservatives said the current posture of the case wasn’t appropriate for the Supreme Court’s intervention, even as they expressed concerns that Hawaii’s top court was not properly reading the Second Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, noted the “obvious unconstitutionality” of Hawaii’s laws but said “correction of the Hawaii Supreme Court’s error must await another day.” Justice Neil Gorsuch similarly wrote that the decision “raises serious questions.”
Christopher Wilson appealed to the Supreme Court after being arrested in December 2017 when police allegedly found him trespassing on private property with a pistol and ten rounds in his front waist band. The gun was unregistered, and Wilson hadn’t applied for a carry permit.
Monday’s order lets stand a ruling from Hawaii’s top court rejecting Wilson’s arguments that some of his charges violated his constitutional right to bear arms, which enables the case to move toward trial.
The three conservative justices noted that Wilson could begin a new round of appeals after trial.
“The Hawaii Supreme Court issued its ruling in the course of an interlocutory appeal. And often courts revisit and supplement interlocutory rulings later in the course of proceedings,” Gorsuch wrote. “Perhaps the Hawaii Supreme Court will take advantage of that opportunity in this case. If not, Mr. Wilson remains free to seek this Court’s review after final judgment.”
The decision from Hawaii’s top court was notable for its rebuke of the Supreme Court’s recent expansion of gun rights, saying it “unravels durable law.”
“The Supreme Court makes state and federal courts use a fuzzy ‘history and traditions’ test to evaluate laws designed to promote public safety. It scraps the traditional techniques used by federal and state courts to review laws passed by the People to protect people,” the Hawaii court’s opinion read.
“And by turning the test into history and nothing else, it dismantles workable methods to interpret firearms laws,” it continued. “All to advance a chosen interpretive modality.”
The court held that Hawaii’s “place to keep” offenses, which make it a felony to possess a handgun or ammunition outside one’s home or business without a license, complied with both the Second Amendment and the state constitution.
“States are not free to set up a licensing scheme violative of the Second Amendment and then prosecute people engaged in constitutionally protected conduct for not complying with the scheme,” Wilson’s public defender wrote in his Supreme Court petition.
By declining to hear Wilson’s appeal, the Supreme Court’s order enables Wilson to proceed to trial.
“Carrying an illegally obtained firearm is plainly not the conduct of a ‘law-abiding citizen,’ and thus is not something the States are obligated to countenance,” Hawaii prosecutors wrote in court filings.
