Our brief urges the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit's decision, arguing this rule is incompatible with the Court’s landmark decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, undermines the rights of thoroughly vetted permit holders, turns everyday commercial spaces into soft targets for criminals, and wastes scarce police resources that should be focused on violent crime. A reversal will restore the traditional presumption that licensed carry is allowed unless the owner affirmatively objects, and will strengthen lawful self-defense rights for both civilians and peace officers.
At stake in Wolford is the core right to bear arms for self-defense outside the home, a right the Supreme Court affirmed in Bruen just three years ago. Hawaii's laws, much like those in California and other restrictive states, effectively transform vast swaths of public life into "gun-free" zones. Petitioners Jason Wolford, Alison Wolford, Atom Kasprzycki, and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition argue that these restrictions violate the Second Amendment, as they lack historical analogues and burden the right to self-defense without justification.
The core dispute in Wolford centers on the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that the United States has a historical tradition of banning firearm carry on private property open to the public unless the owner consents. In effect, the court flipped the default rule for businesses, stores, restaurants, and other places the public is invited to enter. Petitioners and supporting amici argue that this interpretation badly misreads both history and Bruen’s requirement that modern regulations be evaluated by “how” and “why” analogous laws burdened the right in the past.
Even though the panel struck down California’s signage-only consent rule while upholding Hawaii’s more “flexible” version, the deeper constitutional problem is the presumption flip itself. By making consent the exception rather than the rule, the law creates nearly insurmountable barriers to the public carry that the Second Amendment protects. Other federal circuits have already rejected similar default bans on carry in places open to the public, creating a clear circuit split that only the Supreme Court can resolve.
Our amicus brief, authored by Mastagni Holstedt, APC attorneys David E. Mastagni and Taylor Davies-Mahaffey alongside colleagues Timothy Talbot and Michael Morguess, drives home several critical points. The brief deconstructs the Ninth Circuits faulty analogues, which fail the Court's "how and why" test, and lays out the empirical data demonstrating how such laws actually endanger the public.
First, Bruen demands that the government bear the burden of proving a modern regulation is consistent with historical tradition in both its burden and its justification. The Ninth Circuit relied on only two outlier laws, an anti-poaching statute and a racist Reconstruction-era Black Code, as purported "dead ringers" for the presumption flip. The anti-poaching statute fails the how test because the hunting lands were not open to the public. Both laws fail the why test. Hawaii's law was presumably intended to reduce gun violence, not invidiously discriminate based on race or prevent trespassing and poaching.
Second, flipping the default consent rule chills the exercise of a core constitutional right and effectively converts most private businesses into “sensitive places,” something Bruen explicitly warned against.
Drawing on CPRC's extensive research, we present evidence that right-to-carry laws do not increase violent crime. In fact, they deter it. Concealed-carry permit holders are among the most heavily vetted and law-abiding segments of the population, with revocation and criminal violation rates that are vanishingly small. In California alone, where permit holders must undergo rigorous background checks and training, these individuals commit crimes at rates exponentially lower than even peace officers. Restricting their ability to carry does nothing to enhance safety.
Modern empirical evidence, when analyzed by economists like John R. Lott, Jr. with rigorous methods that correct the flaws of earlier studies, shows that right-to-carry laws are associated with reductions in violent crime, especially murder and rape, and are not linked to increases in robbery or assault. Gun-free zones, by contrast, simply invite attack and create defenseless victims in the very places where police cannot always be present. Over 92% of attacks since 1950 have occurred in such areas, including the 2023 Atlanta hospital shooting, the Louisville bank attack, and the Texas mall incident. Mass shooters purposefully select areas where law-abiding CCW holders are disarmed, leaving victims vulnerable. Armed, law-abiding civilians deter criminals and can interrupt attacks in progress, making communities safer and, importantly, making the job of uniformed officers less dangerous.
Compounding this risk, manifestos from several mass shooters reveal a calculated strategy to target gun-free zones where resistance is minimal. The 2022 Buffalo supermarket shooter explicitly noted in his writings that "areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack" and that "areas with strict gun laws are also great places of attack," deliberately choosing a location in New York with virtually no concealed carry permits. Likewise, the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooter planned assaults on multiple sites but selected the school after a "threat assessment" deemed another target to have "too much security," opting for the softer target. This pattern heightens dangers for law enforcement, as in these disarmed environments, uniformed police officers, i.e. the only armed presence, become the initial targets for elimination. FBI data indicates officers are shot in one out of every six active shooter events, often in lethal ambushes at the outset to neutralize any immediate response. A discreetly armed, law-abiding populace introduces uncertainty for criminals and spreads the risk, reducing the chance that officers will be singled out.
For California's peace officers, the stakes are especially high. A favorable ruling would vindicate inherent self-defense rights that officers rely upon to protect us and themselves. The Court can also end post-Bruen attempts to evade the Second Amendment through blanket presumptive bans and bring the Ninth Circuit into line with the rest of our country. Restoring the consent presumption would allow officers and civilians alike to carry for self-defense on private property without navigating a maze of prohibitions.
A Supreme Court decision restoring broader self-defense rights could have profound ripple effects. It might bolster officers' use-of-force defenses in court, emphasizing the objective reasonableness of the response to an immediate and lethal threat, while countering false narratives that equate armed self-defense with escalation or murder. Operationally, with staffing shortages plaguing departments statewide, law-abiding armed citizens serve as a critical force multiplier in the rare but catastrophic active-shooter or mass-attack events where an immediate officer response is impossible. Politically, reversing Wolford would push back against efforts to turn most commercial spaces into prohibited zones and would reinforce evidence-based policies that target prohibited possessors and enhance penalties for gun crime rather than disarming the law-abiding.
In short, our brief argues that the presumption-flip endorsed by the Ninth Circuit is constitutionally unsound and operationally counterproductive. It creates defenseless victims, wastes police resources, and places officers at greater risk. Vetted concealed-carry holders are demonstrably not the problem. The data show extraordinarily low CCW carrier violation rates and clear public-safety benefits from right-to-carry laws. A Supreme Court decision restoring the traditional consent presumption would return workable, constitutionally faithful rules to private property open to the public and make California’s streets safer for both communities and the officers who protect them.
We will continue to keep PORAC, CAHP, and our peace-officer clients updated as the Supreme Court considers Wolford v. Lopez. View the full brief here.
