The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Hawaii law that imposes strict limits on where people may carry firearms, as the court’s conservative supermajority continues to expand gun rights.
In 2023, Hawaii made it illegal for gun owners, even those with permits to carry weapons, to bring a firearm onto private property that is open to the public. The law prohibited carrying weapons in places like stores and beaches without prior explicit permission from the property owner.
The dispute, which has not yet been set for argument, was one of five new cases the justices added to their docket on Friday in what is shaping up to be a blockbuster term for the Supreme Court.
The term, which begins on Monday, already includes culture war battles, including over trans athletes and conversion therapy intended to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, along with major challenges to Trump administration policies on tariffs and to the president’s power to fire the leaders of independent agencies.
In an order announcing they would take up the Hawaii gun case, the justices said they would consider whether a San Francisco-based federal appeals court had erred when it found that Hawaii could presumptively block the carrying of handguns, even by licensed holders, on private property.
The Supreme Court in 2022 took an expansive view of the right to bear arms, holding that people have a constitutional right to carry firearms in public. That ruling struck down a New York law that had imposed strict limits on carrying firearms outside of homes. Still, the court found states could ban guns in “sensitive places” such as schools and courthouses. In the case, the court set out a test that any measure aimed at limiting gun rights must be in line with the “history and tradition” of the country.
Three Maui residents, along with the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, a nonprofit group focused on firearms rights, sued to block Hawaii’s law. In September 2024, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely upheld the law. In their ruling, they criticized the Supreme Court’s current interpretation of gun rights, calling it “seemingly arbitrary” and “hard to explain.” That created a split among the nation’s appeals courts about whether laws limiting firearms on private property violate the Second Amendment. Earlier this year, lawyers for the Hawaii residents asked the justices to hear their case to resolve the issue. They claimed Hawaii’s law had rendered “illusory the right to carry in public.”
Lawyers for the Trump administration weighed in on the side of the residents, asking the justices to take up the case. In a brief to the court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of the right to keep and bear arms and in the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment.”
“From the earliest days of the republic, individuals have been free to carry firearms on private property unless the property owner directs otherwise,” Mr. Sauer wrote, arguing that Hawaii’s law “inverted the longstanding presumption and enacted a novel default rule under which individuals may carry firearms on private property only if the owner provides express authorization.”
The justices also announced on Friday that they would take up a pair of property disputes with foreign policy implications that involve the Cuban government, Exxon Mobil, major cruise lines and a business that built docks in Havana in the early 20th century.
At issue is a federal law that allows U.S. nationals to sue over claims that their property has been confiscated by the Cuban government. The 1996 law has been politically and diplomatically controversial, and has been used by the United States to impose sanctions against Cuba’s communist regime.
From 1996 until 2019, presidents have generally suspended the right of individuals and businesses to sue because of international pressure. President Trump allowed the suspension to lapse, prompting the filing of the lawsuits now before the court.
Attorney Christopher Landau, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, represented Havana Docks Corporation in the petition to the justices and called the issue the “most important case involving U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba” to reach the court in 60 years. Mr. Landau is currently the U.S. deputy secretary of state.
In the Exxon case, the court will decide whether the company can sue in U.S. courts over the Cuban government’s seizure of oil and gas assets while Fidel Castro was in power.
“Like the thousands of other victims of the Castro regime, Exxon has been waiting since the early 1960s to receive compensation,” attorney Jeffrey Wall, who also clerked for Justice Thomas, told the justices in urging the court to take the case.
Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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