On May 1, 2025, the Bondi Department of Justice filed a 29-page amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Wolford v. Lopez, No. 24-1046 — a Second Amendment challenge to Hawaii’s law making it a crime for a licensed concealed-carry holder to bring a firearm onto private property open to the public without the owner’s express permission. This brief is historic. I do not use that word lightly. In the entire post-Heller era — stretching back to 2008 — no administration’s Justice Department had ever filed an amicus brief in support of gun-rights plaintiffs at the certiorari stage in a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court. Not once.
The Case That Put Five States’ Laws in Play
Wolford v. Lopez originates in Hawaii’s Act 52 of 2023, the state legislature’s post-Bruen response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Second Amendment protects a general right to public carry. Along with sweeping sensitive-places restrictions, Act 52 created what gun-rights advocates call the “vampire rule”: concealed carry permit holders are barred from carrying on private property open to the public — malls, restaurants, stores, parking lots — unless the owner provides express affirmative permission. The default is prohibition, inverted from every historical norm.
Five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York — enacted nearly identical vampire-rule laws after Bruen. If you live in one of those states and have a carry permit, you effectively cannot carry anywhere in public unless every business owner individually opts in. That is functional nullification of the Bruen right.
The district court (Wolford v. Lopez, 686 F. Supp. 3d 1034 (D. Haw. 2023)) granted a preliminary injunction blocking Hawaii’s vampire rule, finding that Bruen plainly covered licensed public carry and that the historical record contained no tradition of inverted property-default rules for firearms. The Ninth Circuit reversed in an 81-page opinion (Wolford v. Lopez, 116 F.4th 959 (9th Cir. 2024)), finding Hawaii’s inverted default constitutional under Bruen. Plaintiffs Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford, Atom Kasprzycki, and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition filed for certiorari on April 1, 2025. The Bondi DOJ stepped in thirty days later.
What Solicitor General Sauer’s Brief Actually Says
Solicitor General D. John Sauer — with AAG Harmeet Dhillon and Deputy Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris signing onto the brief — did not pull punches. On Hawaii’s vampire rule: it “defies — indeed, effectively nullifies — the ‘general right to publicly carry arms’ that Bruen recognized.” On the state’s theory: “States cannot evade Bruen by banning public carry through indirect means.”
The brief made the case-selection argument directly to the Court: “Since the foundational decisions of Heller and McDonald in 2008 and 2010, the Court has granted plenary review in and decided only two Second Amendment cases: Bruen and Rahimi.” Lower courts are in open conflict. Multiple circuits have reached different results on sensitive-places and property-default rules. Tens of millions of Americans in five major blue states have their Bruen public-carry right functionally eliminated. The brief called Wolford “an appropriate vehicle” and urged SCOTUS to take the case and provide the guidance lower courts are desperately lacking.
The preliminary-injunction posture — where the case currently sits — was not a reason to avoid taking it, the brief argued. The Ninth Circuit issued a full 81-page opinion on the merits; this was no rushed interlocutory appeal. The court of appeals addressed the merits thoroughly enough that cert would resolve the actual constitutional question, not some procedural artifact. The SG’s brief is strategically sound: it pre-empts the “bad vehicle” argument that often convinces SCOTUS to wait.
Attorney General Bondi was direct in her public statement: “Hawaii’s law plainly violates the Second Amendment,” she said, adding that a win in Wolford would “restore Second Amendment rights for millions of Americans.”
Why This Is a Sea Change for the Second Amendment Movement
From 2009 through January 2021, and again from 2021 through 2025, the Justice Department treated Second Amendment cases at SCOTUS as problems to be managed. The Obama and Biden DOJs opposed gun-rights cert petitions, defended ATF overreach, and never filed an amicus brief in support of gun-rights plaintiffs at the certiorari stage. The first Trump DOJ made real moves at the regulatory and litigation level but, to my knowledge, never filed a pro-plaintiff cert-stage 2A amicus at the Supreme Court.
This brief changes that posture permanently — or as long as this DOJ is in place. The practical significance goes beyond Wolford. When the Solicitor General tells SCOTUS a case deserves review, the Court pays attention. The justices know that taking the case means having the executive branch as a partner, not an adversary, in enforcing the resulting ruling. Multiple 2A cases are currently pending cert — Snope v. Brown, No. 24-203 (Maryland assault-weapon ban); magazine-ban cases out of other circuits — and the Solicitor General’s posture in Wolford signals that the administration wants SCOTUS to engage on all of them.
The Second Amendment has had sympathetic courts, sympathetic donors, and sympathetic organizations pushing at SCOTUS for years. What it has never had — until today — is an executive branch fighting alongside us at the highest level. That is the sea change.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.