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Justice Jackson Calls Out SCOTUS’ ‘Sudden Aversion’ to History in Striking Down Hawaii Gun Law
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called out the conservative members of the Supreme Court for a “sudden aversion” to history in striking down a Hawaiian gun control law.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines on Wolford v. Lopez Thursday morning. Prior to the ruling, Hawaii state law banned carrying a firearm into private property accessible by the public—like a gas station or supermarket, for example—unless explicitly given permission by the property owner.
Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion. In it, the Court ruled that Hawaii’s law did not pass a test laid out in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen. Bruen is a two-part test for Second Amendment cases. First, it asks whether the law before the Court “applies to ‘the people’ and restricts the ‘keeping’ or ‘bearing’ of ‘Arms.'” Next it must also look at whether the law infringes upon “the historical understanding of the codified right.”
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Hawaii has had prohibitions on firearms since before it became a state. However, when the Court decided Bruen, which repealed a number of state laws prohibiting carrying firearms outside the home, Hawaii passed this version of the law. Under the law, while Hawaiians could carry firearms in public, they were assumed to be barred from most businesses.
“When these permit holders leave home in the morning, not only must they 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, convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, drug stores, grocery stores, ‘big box’ stores, home improvement stores, barber shops or hair salons, dry cleaners, and laundromats,” Alito wrote. “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. We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”
Justice Jackson had harsh words for this line of argument. She wrote that while she disagreed with the original Bruen ruling, she accepts it as precedent—but says the majority got the test wrong, as the law is fundamentally not a Second Amendment case but a property law case.
“To hear the majority tell it, Hawaii’s law is a blatant attempt to end-run our Second Amendment precedents. But the statute at issue does no such thing. Instead, it fairly applies a first principle of property law—the right to exclude—and does no harm to the Second Amendment,” she wrote.
She also points out Hawaii’s historical relationship with gun laws, dating back to pre-colonial rule in 1833. In that year, King Kamehameha III banned weapon ownership generally, including knives, swords and firearms. The king’s law continued even after U.S. annexation in 1898. In 1927, some people in Hawaii were allowed to carry firearms, but it was tightly controlled.
Even after being granted statehood in 1959, Hawaii kept strong regulations on firearms. A 1961 law adjusted the regulations to allow gun ownership if a potential owner could prove an “exceptional case,” Jackson wrote.
“That custom continued until very recently. Prior to this Court’s decision in Bruen, Hawaii issued concealed-carry permits only in ‘exceptional case[s],’ which required ‘an applicant [to] sho[w] reason to fear injury to the applicant’s person or property.’ … The result? Hawaiians have rarely carried (or encountered others carrying) guns,” Jackson wrote.
The conservative wing of the Court claims to follow the “originalist” philosophy of jurisprudence—attempting to not just follow the letter of the law but how it would have been interpreted when originally written. But Jackson poked fun at that side of the court for its “sudden aversion” to this interpretation of the Constitution and the existing Hawaii state laws.
“The Court’s sudden aversion to consulting history to inform the scope of the Second Amendment right at Bruen’s step one is strange, to say the least. Several Members of the majority have elsewhere opined that interpreting the Second Amendment requires understanding the original meaning of its text. Yet the majority’s newfound understanding of the first step of Bruen obliterates any need for reference back to original meaning. All that step one now requires is a 21st-century judge to read the text of the Second Amendment and ask herself what she thinks the words mean,” Jackson wrote.
“Worse, the majority’s new methodology is a one-way ratchet: It inevitably works only to the benefit of armed carry by removing any real burden of proof on gun owners at step one. The majority simply equates the ability to carry a gun with the right to carry anywhere and everywhere. … Because of that, it then assumes that any impediment to carrying qualifies as a burden on the right. … The upshot of the majority’s view of Bruen’s first step is thus that any law that regulates the carrying of firearms is presumptively unconstitutional. But under this Court’s precedents, assessing whether conduct falls within the right protected by the Second Amendment requires more than breezily asserting that the restricted conduct involves carrying a firearm,” she added.
In closing, she calls out the majority for changing the Bruen test, but also stripping property interests from citizens being “protected against unauthorized armed entry.”
“From this day forward, it will be difficult to view Bruen as anything more than a fig leaf,” She wrote. “Of course, the real irony is that the Court’s effort to rein in judicial discretion has resulted in an arbitrary rule that unleashes judges to thwart gun regulation at every turn.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
