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No. 10314251
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
May v. Bonta
No. 10314251 · Decided January 15, 2025
No. 10314251·Ninth Circuit · 2025·
FlawFinder last updated this page Apr. 2, 2026
Case Details
Court
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Decided
January 15, 2025
Citation
No. 10314251
Disposition
See opinion text.
Full Opinion
FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
MARCO ANTONIO No. 23-4354
CARRALERO; GARRISON
D.C. No.
HAM; MICHAEL
8:23-cv-01798-
SCHWARTZ; ORANGE COUNTY
CJC-ADS
GUN OWNERS PAC; SAN DIEGO
COUNTY GUN OWNERS
PAC; CALIFORNIA GUN RIGHTS
ORDER
FOUNDATION; FIREARMS
POLICY COALITION, INC.,
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v.
ROB BONTA, in his official capacity
as Attorney General of California,
Defendant – Appellant.
RENO MAY, an No. 23-4356
individual; ANTHONY MIRANDA,
an individual; ERIC HANS, an D.C. No.
individual; GARY BRENNAN, an 8:23-cv-01696-
individual; OSCAR A. BARRETTO, CJC-ADS
Jr., an individual; ISABELLE R.
BARRETTO, an individual; BARRY
BAHRAMI, an individual; PETE
STEPHENSON, an
2 CARRALERO V. BONTA
individual; ANDREW HARMS, an
individual; JOSE FLORES, an
individual; Dr. SHELDON HOUGH,
DDS, an individual; SECOND
AMENDMENT
FOUNDATION; GUN OWNERS
OF AMERICA, INC.; GUN
OWNERS FOUNDATION; GUN
OWNERS OF CALIFORNIA,
INC.; LIBERAL GUN OWNERS
ASSOCIATION; CALIFORNIA
RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION,
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v.
ROBERT BONTA, in his official
capacity as Attorney General of the
State of California,
Defendant - Appellant,
DOES, 1-10,
Defendant.
Filed January 15, 2025
Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Susan P. Graber, and Jennifer
Sung, Circuit Judges.
Order;
Dissent by Judge Collins;
Dissent by Judge VanDyke
CARRALERO V. BONTA 3
SUMMARY*
Second Amendment
The panel denied appellees’ petition for panel rehearing
and petition for rehearing en banc in a case in which the
panel affirmed in part and reversed in large part district court
orders preliminarily enjoining the implementation or
enforcement of several provisions of a California law that
prohibits the carry of firearms at sensitive places.
Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge
Collins, joined by Judge Bress, stated that, for many of the
same reasons set forth by Judge VanDyke, he agreed that the
panel failed to apply the proper standards for evaluating
Second Amendment challenges, and that, in doing so, the
panel largely vitiated “the right to bear commonly used arms
in public” that the Supreme Court recognized in New York
State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Judge
VanDyke, joined by Judges Callahan, Ikuta, R. Nelson, Lee
and Bumatay, wrote that the panel’s opinion is contrary to
Supreme Court precedent and results in a circuit split with
the Second Circuit. Attempts to declare almost all cities and
public locations as either prohibited “sensitive places” or
presumptive gun-free zones cannot be squared with Bruen.
*
This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has
been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
4 CARRALERO V. BONTA
ORDER
The panel has voted to deny Appellees’ petition for panel
rehearing. Judge Sung has voted to deny Appellees’ petition
for rehearing en banc, and Judges Schroeder and Graber
have so recommended.
The full court was advised of Appellees’ petition for
rehearing en banc. A judge requested a vote on whether to
rehear the matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a
majority of the votes of the nonrecused active judges in favor
of en banc consideration. Fed. R. App. P. 35
Appellees’ petition for panel rehearing and petition for
rehearing en banc, Docket No. 80, is DENIED.
COLLINS, Circuit Judge, joined by BRESS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:
For many of the same reasons set forth by Judge
VanDyke, I agree that the panel in these cases failed to apply
the proper standards for evaluating Second Amendment
challenges, as set forth in New York State Rifle & Pistol
Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), and United States v.
Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), and that, in doing so, the panel
largely vitiated the “the right to bear commonly used arms
in public” that the Supreme Court recognized in Bruen. See
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 70. We therefore should have reheard
these important cases en banc.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 5
VANDYKE, Circuit Judge, joined by CALLAHAN,
IKUTA, R. NELSON, LEE, and BUMATAY, Circuit Judges,
dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:
Just a few years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol
Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 10 (2022), the Supreme
Court made clear that the Second Amendment includes the
right to bear firearms in public. With its decision in these
cases our court allows governments in our circuit to
practically eliminate most of that right. In response to
Bruen, both Hawaii and California declared a broad and
unprecedented number of locations to be prohibited
“sensitive places,” and on top of that imposed novel criminal
sanctions for concealed carry onto private property absent
express permission received in advance. With this court’s
blessing, law-abiding and licensed citizens in this circuit can
now be banned from carrying firearms in most public and
private spaces. Apparently, notwithstanding Bruen’s
instruction that the Second Amendment protects a right to
carry a firearm in public, what it really protects is the right
to carry only while taking your dog out for a walk on a city
sidewalk. If only New York City had been as creative as
California and Hawaii, it too could have avoided Bruen and
succeeded in banning firearms throughout most of
Manhattan.
I don’t think that’s right. Hawaii’s and California’s
creative attempts to declare almost all cities and public
locations as either prohibited “sensitive places” or
presumptive gun-free zones cannot be squared with Bruen.
There, the Supreme Court concluded that designating entire
cities “sensitive places” and prohibiting the carrying of
firearms in those locations would effectively “exempt cities
from the Second Amendment” and “eviscerate the general
6 CARRALERO V. BONTA
right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.” Id. at 31. Yet
California’s and Hawaii’s bans practically accomplish close
to the same thing rejected in Bruen.
In upholding most of these new laws, the panel distorted
Bruen’s text-history-and-tradition analysis. It failed to
identify any Founding-era tradition justifying laws that flip
the presumption like California and Hawaii have attempted.
Instead, it justified its conclusion by pointing to just two
outlier laws—one an anti-poaching colonial law and the
other a discriminatory Reconstruction era Black Code.
Some of the sensitive place restrictions allowed by the panel
ban carry in locations that have existed since the Founding,
with no comparable prohibition in those locations at that
time. The panel upheld those and other provisions of
Hawaii’s and California’s bans by extracting overbroad
principles from strained analogies to unrelated laws and by
looking to late-19th and early-20th-century laws enacted
long after the proper historical time period.
Among other things, our court’s decision in these cases
results in a split with the Second Circuit, which ruled that the
application of New York’s similar private-property law was
unconstitutional. We should have taken these cases en banc
to rectify this, and I respectfully dissent from our failure to
do so.
I.
First, some background. In Bruen, the Supreme Court
recognized the Second Amendment protects the “right to
carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Id. at
10. The Court thus held that New York’s proper-cause
requirement for its licensing and permitting regime was
unconstitutional, id. at 71, and threw constitutional doubt on
California’s and Hawaii’s similarly aggressive
CARRALERO V. BONTA 7
licensed-carry bans. See id. at 57 (rejecting our en banc
court’s holding in Young v. Hawaii, 992 F.3d 765, 813 (9th
Cir. 2021) (en banc), that “the government may regulate, and
even prohibit, in public places” the carrying of firearms).
California appropriately responded by “remov[ing] the good
character and good cause requirements from the issuance
criteria” for its concealed carry permits. 2023 Cal. Legis.
Serv. Ch. 249. But that’s not all California did. It also
enacted new laws that prohibit the concealed carrying of
firearms in many new locations—what Bruen referred to as
“sensitive places” prohibitions. Hawaii did the same. It
amended its carry permit statute—which before Bruen
restricted the right to obtain a carry permit outside the home
to only “an exceptional case,” 2023 Haw. Sess. Laws 113
(Act 52)—to now make it possible for the ordinary, law-
abiding citizen to obtain a carry permit, again as required by
Bruen, HRS § 134-9. But like California, Hawaii took away
with its other hand what it purported to grant, imposing its
own broad new restrictions on where such permit holders
may carry. See HRS §§ 134-9.1, 134-9.5.
California’s new law makes it a criminal offense to carry
in 26 different places—even with a permit—including
locations where liquor is sold for consumption on the
premises (whether the permit-holder is drinking or not),
parks and athletic facilities, and casinos. Cal. Pen. Code
§ 26230(a)(9), (12), (15). And Hawaii’s law makes it a
criminal offense to carry a firearm onto 15 different types of
property—again, even with a permit—including
government buildings, bars and restaurants serving alcohol,
and parks and beaches. HRS § 134-9.1(a)(1), (4), (9).
Perhaps most far-reaching, both states also flipped the
default rule for carrying on private property. Under
traditional property law principles, a person with a carry
8 CARRALERO V. BONTA
permit is allowed to bring firearms onto private property
unless the owner prohibits it. See, e.g., Christian v. Nigrelli,
642 F. Supp. 3d 393, 407 (W.D.N.Y. 2022) (observing that
at the Founding “private property owners” were principally
responsible for “exclud[ing] others from their property”); I.
Ayres & S. Jonnalagadda, Guests with Guns: Public Support
for “No Carry” Defaults on Private Land, 48 J.L. Med. &
Ethics 183, 184 (2020). Hawaii’s and California’s statutes
invert that longstanding principle. By statute, both states
now prohibit carrying firearms onto private property unless
the proprietor affirmatively gives advance permission. See
Cal. Pen. Code § 26230(a)(26); HRS § 134-9.5. California’s
law allows for permission to be granted only if “the operator
of the establishment clearly and conspicuously posts a sign”
stating that carry is allowed, Cal. Pen. Code § 26230(a)(26),
while Hawaii’s law allows permission to be granted through
any “[u]nambiguous written or verbal authorization” or by
the “posting of clear and conspicuous signage.” HRS
§ 134-9.5(b).
Both laws dramatically restrict the practical ability to
carry in public in their states. For example, Hawaii’s law
prohibits, presumptively or outright, the carrying of a
handgun on 96.4% of the publicly accessible land in Maui
County. And California’s law “turns nearly every public
place in California into a ‘sensitive place,’” May v. Bonta,
709 F. Supp. 3d 940, 947 (C.D. Cal. 2023), effectively
limiting carrying—in one plaintiff’s apt characterization—
“to just streets, sidewalks, and the few standalone private
business willing to post signs affirmatively allowing carry.”
Plaintiffs challenged the laws in both California and
Hawaii. In California, the Carralero and May plaintiffs
sought preliminary injunctions. They requested that the
district court enjoin enforcement of the statute with respect
CARRALERO V. BONTA 9
to only some of the “sensitive places” created by California’s
law. They did not challenge, for example, the statute’s
application to locations such as schools, certain government
buildings, or places of higher education. See Wolford, 116
F.4th at 973, 975–76.
The district court granted in full the plaintiffs’ requested
injunctive relief, enjoining enforcement of the law with
respect to California’s ban in hospitals, playgrounds, public
transit facilities, parks and athletic facilities, property
controlled by the Parks and Recreation Department, bars and
restaurants that serve alcohol, gatherings that require a
permit, libraries, casinos, zoos, stadiums and arenas,
amusement parks, museums, places of worship, banks, and
all parking lots adjacent to sensitive places. May, 709 F.
Supp. 3d at 947. The district court also enjoined
enforcement of California’s new default rule flipping the
presumption for private property held open to the public. Id.
at 967.
In Hawaii, the Wolford plaintiffs also sought injunctive
relief. Wolford v. Lopez, 686 F. Supp. 3d 1034, 1042 (D.
Haw. 2023). As with the California plaintiffs, the Hawaii
plaintiffs “did not challenge the prohibitions in all areas
under the Act. Instead, they challenged only a limited subset
that impose particularly egregious restrictions on their
Second Amendment right to bear arms.” Id. (cleaned up).
The district court granted in part and denied in part a
temporary restraining order, which was then converted into
a preliminary injunction. Id. at 1077. Specifically, the
district court enjoined enforcement of Hawaii’s prohibition
on carrying firearms in parking lots shared by government
buildings and nongovernment buildings, banks, financial
institutions and their adjacent parking areas, public beaches,
10 CARRALERO V. BONTA
public parks and their adjacent parking areas, bars, and
restaurants that serve alcohol and their adjacent parking
areas. Id. The district court also enjoined enforcement of
the new default rule for private property, but limited the
injunction to private property held open to the public. Id.
Both Hawaii and California appealed. The two
California cases were consolidated, and a panel of this court
issued a single opinion for all three cases. Wolford, 116
F.4th at 976. With respect to the California law, the panel
upheld the district court’s injunction as to medical facilities,
public transportation facilities, public gatherings, places of
worship, financial institutions, parking areas connected to
those places, and the new private property default rule. Id.
at 1003. The panel otherwise reversed the injunction,
allowing California’s restrictions to go into effect with
respect to bars and restaurants that serve alcohol,
playgrounds, youth centers, parks, athletic areas, athletic
facilities, most real property under the control of the
Department of Parks and Recreation or Department of Fish
and Wildlife, casinos and similar gambling establishments,
stadiums, arenas, public libraries, amusement parks, zoos
and museums, parking areas and similar areas connected to
those places, and all parking areas connected to other
sensitive places listed in the statute. Id. at 1003.
With respect to Hawaii’s law, the panel upheld the
preliminary injunction as applied to financial institutions and
certain parking lots. Id. at 1002. The panel otherwise
reversed the injunction, allowing Hawaii’s restrictions to go
into effect with respect to bars and restaurants that serve
alcohol, beaches, parks, and similar areas, parking areas
adjacent to all those places, and Hawaii’s new private
property default rule. Id. at 1002–03.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 11
Given the procedural posture of these cases—appeals
from grants of preliminary injunctions—the panel applied
the Winter factors, which require that a movant show: (1) a
likelihood of success on the merits, (2) the presence of
irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief, (3) the
balance of the equities tips in the movant’s favor, and (4) the
public interest tips in favor of an injunction. Winter v. Nat.
Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008). But the panel
and both district courts appropriately focused their analyses
on the first factor, which “is a threshold inquiry and is the
most important factor.” Env’t Prot. Info. Ctr. v. Carlson,
968 F.3d 985, 989 (9th Cir. 2020); see also Disney Enters.,
Inc. v. VidAngel, Inc., 869 F.3d 848, 856 (9th Cir. 2017)
(noting that a “court need not consider the other factors” if a
movant fails to show a likelihood of success on the merits).
The Wolford, Carralero, and May plaintiffs each sought
en banc review, which a majority of our court has now
declined to grant. In refusing to correct the panel’s opinion,
our court left in place a decision directly contrary to Supreme
Court precedent and locked in an unnecessary circuit split of
our own creation.
II.
A good starting place to analyze how the panel in these
cases went wrong is with the Supreme Court’s discussion of
sensitive places laws, and to compare that discussion with
what our court has allowed California and Hawaii to do in
these cases. In Bruen the Court explained that “relatively
few” public locations can be properly classified as “sensitive
places” “where arms carrying c[an] be prohibited consistent
with the Second Amendment.” 597 U.S. at 30. The few
locations Bruen identified include schools, government
buildings, “legislative assemblies, polling places, and
12 CARRALERO V. BONTA
courthouses.” Id. Apart from these locations, “the historical
record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century
‘sensitive places’ where weapons were altogether
prohibited.” Id. The Court rejected New York’s attempted
characterization of its proper-cause licensing requirement as
an appropriate “sensitive places” law, after the government
attempted to label as sensitive places public places “where
people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and
other public-safety professionals are presumptively
available.” Id. at 30–31. The Court reasoned that while
people often congregate in sensitive places and law
enforcement professionals are presumptively available in
those locations, applying the tradition associated with
sensitive places to all locations that fit those two
characteristics expanded it “far too broadly.” Id. at 31. Such
a reading would “in effect exempt cities from the Second
Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to
publicly carry arms for self-defense.” Id. The Court
ultimately concluded that “there is no historical basis for
New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a
‘sensitive place’ simply because it is crowded and protected
generally by the New York City Police Department.” Id.
Hawaii’s response to Bruen—which practically renders
nearly all the publicly accessible areas of the entire island of
Maui a “sensitive place”—seeks to accomplish by other
means most of what the Supreme Court rejected in Bruen.
As noted, Hawaii’s law completely or presumptively
restricts the licensed carrying of a handgun in 96.4% of the
publicly accessible land in Maui County. While New York
sought to ban most public carry of firearms by sharply
curtailing who may carry, Hawaii accomplishes the same
feat by banning most places where someone may carry.
Hawaii’s law is the same sort of “broad prohibit[ory]”
CARRALERO V. BONTA 13
regime that the Court already rejected, as it still makes most
public places off limits notwithstanding the “general right to
public carry.” Id. at 33, 50.
The panel’s opinion addressed the obvious tension
between its conclusions in this case and those reached by the
Supreme Court in Bruen in a mere footnote:
because Plaintiffs may take their firearms
onto the public streets and sidewalks
throughout Maui County (and elsewhere in
Hawaii), as well as into many commercial
establishments and other locations, the
situation in this case is unlike the argument
that Bruen rejected, which would have
meant, effectively, that firearms could be
banned from the entire island of Manhattan.
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 984 n.4 (citing Bruen, 597 U.S. at 31).
The panel’s assertion that licensed individuals may still carry
in “many commercial establishments” is belied by the
record, which, as the panel acknowledged, evinces what
common sense suggests: that “many property owners will
not post signs of any sort or give specialized permission,
regardless of the default rule.” Id. at 993. Indeed, the panel
recognized that there would be little reason for Hawaii to
have flipped the presumption unless it reasonably
anticipated that many—indeed, most—private property
owners will simply let the default rule govern. See id. (“if
that group were small or did not exist, Hawaii’s law would
accomplish little or nothing”). So what we’re left with is a
law mostly limiting the Second Amendment’s right to
publicly carry to just the “public streets and sidewalks,” id.
at 984 n.4, which obviously dramatically curtails an
14 CARRALERO V. BONTA
individual’s practical ability to be prepared in public to
defend themselves—“the central component of the [Second
Amendment] right.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554
U.S. 570, 599 (2008). Realistically, only those who
aimlessly wander streets and sidewalks without ever
planning to enter a store, park, or other private or public
establishment will be able to carry a firearm in Hawaii. Is
that really what the Supreme Court meant when it
recognized a historically grounded “general right to public
carry” in Bruen?1
The panel’s self-proclaimed “arbitrary” and “[il]logical”
outcome—allowing Hawaii to presumptively prohibit all
firearms on all private property—called for en banc review.
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 1003. It effectively nullified the
Second Amendment rights of millions of Hawaiians and
Californians to bear firearms as they go about their daily
1
It is no solace that the panel found fault with California’s private
property default law while blessing Hawaii’s. Wolford, 116 F.4th at
995–96. The panel concluded that California’s law, which allows
someone to avoid its new private property carry ban only if they receive
permission in written form, was too restrictive for the Second
Amendment. By contrast, Hawaii’s law, which requires the same
advance permission but allows it to be granted in multiple ways
(including orally), passed the panel’s Second Amendment scrutiny. But
the novelty of the two states’ attempts to flip the presumption has little
to do with nuances of how someone might go about restoring permission
to bear a firearm on their property. The overwhelming impact of
California’s and Hawaii’s innovation is the reversal in the presumption
itself. The panel’s distinction between the two states’ presumption-
flipping rules may give the illusion of analytical precision, but it strains
the proverbial gnat while swallowing the camel. And practically, it just
means California and other governments that desire to flip the
presumption will now follow the approach sanctioned by the panel:
Hawaii’s, not California’s.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 15
lives in public. Except, of course, for those who aimlessly
wander the streets.
III.
The panel’s decision is not just generally in tension with
the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Bruen, however. The
nuts-and-bolts of the panel’s analysis is also inconsistent
with how the Court has instructed lower courts to conduct
our text-history-and-tradition analysis. The panel discerned
a historical tradition supporting Hawaii’s novel private
property law, even though there is no such tradition. The
panel added to the Supreme Court’s guidance on when lower
courts should turn to analogies to draw constitutional
principles from the historical record. It drew principles from
unrelated laws regulating some aspect of firearm use, even
when the historical record reveals no examples of
comparable locational restrictions at the same types of places
that existed at the Founding. And the panel broadly
redefined what it means to be a historically unprecedented
location permitting very loose analogizing. Finally, the
panel continued our court’s troubling trend of drawing
analogies at such a high level of generality that any
challenged ban could pass constitutional muster.
A.
Hawaii’s private property default law cannot survive
Bruen’s two-step framework. Under that framework, if the
Second Amendment’s plain text covers regulated conduct,
the regulation will stand only if the government can
“affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the
historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right
to keep and bear arms” in the United States. Bruen, 597 U.S.
at 19, 24. While the government need not identify a “dead
ringer” to show a historical tradition supporting its modern
16 CARRALERO V. BONTA
regulation, it must locate a “well-established and
representative historical analogue.” Id. at 30. Not any loose
analogue will suffice: the historical regulation must have
been “relevantly similar” to the challenged regulation in
“how and why” it “burden[ed] a law-abiding citizen’s right
to armed self-defense.” Id. at 29. As the Supreme Court has
cautioned, upholding a modern regulation that only
“remotely resembles a historical analogue” would entail
“endorsing outliers that our ancestors would never have
accepted” and thus be inconsistent with the historical inquiry
required by Bruen. Id. at 30 (quoting Drummond v.
Robinson Twp., 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d Cir. 2021)). Only when
applied in this manner is “analogical reasoning under the
Second Amendment” done correctly, as “neither a regulatory
straightjacket nor a regulatory blank check.” Id.
Bruen’s first step asks whether “the Second
Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s
conduct.” Id. at 24. The Supreme Court has already told us
that the text of the Second Amendment protects the right to
bear arms outside of the home. Id. at 33. And that right
makes no distinction between public property or private
property held open to the public, as lower courts have
consistently recognized. Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 941,
1044–45 (2d Cir. 2024); Christian v. James, No. 22-CV-695
(JLS), 2024 WL 4458385, at *11 (W.D.N.Y. Oct. 10, 2024);
Kipke v. Moore, 695 F. Supp. 3d 638, 658 n.9 (D. Md. 2023);
Koons v. Platkin, 673 F. Supp. 3d 515, 607–15 (D.N.J.
2023). So Bruen’s first step is easily met by Hawaii’s law,
and the law is presumptively unconstitutional. Bruen, 597
U.S. at 19.
Hawaii’s use of a new statutory presumption—rather
than an outright prohibition—does not change the analysis.
“[A] constitutional prohibition cannot be transgressed
CARRALERO V. BONTA 17
indirectly by the creation of a statutory presumption any
more than it can be violated by direct enactment. The power
to create presumptions is not a means of escape from
constitutional restrictions.” Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S.
513, 526 (1958) (quoting Bailey v. Alabama, 219 U.S. 219,
239 (1911)). The Second Amendment’s text protects against
a presumptive ban on carrying firearms on publicly
accessible private property no less than it protects from
attempts to directly ban the same conduct.
To be sure, the Second Amendment does not restrict
private-property owners’ ability to decide whether to
exclude firearms, or certain people for that matter, from their
property. See Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. 139,
150 (2021). “[T]he right to exclude is ‘universally held to
be a fundamental element of the property right,’ and is ‘one
of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are
commonly characterized as property.’” Id. (quoting Kaiser
Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 176, 179–80 (1979)).
But that is the property owner’s right, not the government’s.
Nothing about a property owner’s authority to exclude
would extend to the government a correlative power to make
new presumptions that control the exclusion of firearms
from private property without any decision by the property
owner.
So we reach Bruen’s second step. To overcome the
presumption of unconstitutionality, Hawaii must show that
its law “is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of
firearm regulation.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. The panel
concluded that Hawaii’s private property default rule is
consistent with one abstract principle derived from the
historical tradition: “the Nation has an established tradition
of arranging the default rules that apply specifically to the
carrying of firearms onto private property.” Wolford, 116
18 CARRALERO V. BONTA
F.4th at 995. Setting aside the staggering generality of the
principle the panel extracted (more on that in a minute), the
historical record the panel relied on simply does not support
it even in the capacious form articulated by the panel.
The panel pointed to two sets of laws as supporting its
principle. The first set includes laws that “prohibited the
carry of firearms onto subsets of private land, such as
plantations or enclosed lands.” Id. at 994. But the panel
itself acknowledged that these laws bear little resemblance
to Hawaii’s and California’s new laws. The historical laws
the panel relied on were “limited to only a subset of private
property; those laws likely did not apply to property that was
generally open to the public”; and their aim was to prevent
poaching, not the dangerous use of firearms. Id. The “how”
(prohibiting carrying on a narrow subset of all enclosed
private property) and the “why” (preventing poaching) of
these historical regulations bear no resemblance to Hawaii’s
and California’s laws presumptively outlawing carrying on
all private property, ostensibly to reduce gun violence (not
poaching). See 2023 Cal. Legis. Serv. Ch. 249 § 1(c). Given
the lack of a tenable analogy, the panel rightly discounted
reliance on these anti-poaching laws.
But the second set of laws—in fact just two laws—that
the panel and the states relied upon to justify the states’
presumptive bans fares no better. A 1771 New Jersey law
and an 1865 Louisiana law purportedly “bann[ed] the
carrying of firearms onto any private property without the
owner’s consent.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 994. But as an
initial matter, two state laws—nearly a century apart—
cannot establish a historical tradition at odds with the text of
the Second Amendment. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 46 (“[W]e
doubt that three colonial regulations could suffice to show a
tradition of public-carry regulation.”). And even if such
CARRALERO V. BONTA 19
scarcity was not alone fatal, there is no consistent record of
enforcement of these laws to the breadth that the states rely
upon them. Id. at 58 & n.25 (noting that a “barren record of
enforcement” is an “additional reason to discount [laws’]
relevance”). The two laws simply fail to provide analogical
support for the broad presumptive rule of disarmament the
panel found.
Even if two laws alone were enough to establish a
historical tradition, these particular two laws are far different
than California’s and Hawaii’s novel bans. The first claimed
analogy, New Jersey’s 1771 law, made it unlawful for
someone “to carry any Gun on any Lands not his own …
unless he hath License or Permission in Writing from the
Owner or Owners or legal Posessor.” 1771 N.J. Laws 343–
347, ch. 540, § 1. This law was an antipoaching and
antitrespassing ordinance—not a broad disarmament statute.
Indeed, the Act’s title was “An Act for the Preservation of
Deer and other Game, and to prevent trespassing with
Guns.” Id. The “why” behind New Jersey’s law was to stop
people from trespassing on private land with firearms for the
purpose of poaching. The “why” of New Jersey’s law is thus
not remotely comparable to the “why” of Hawaii’s law. In
effect New Jersey’s law imposed strict liability restrictions
on trespassing with guns, presumably because proving the
intent behind poaching can be particularly burdensome.
Picture Elmer Fudd creeping across your property, who,
when caught, says: “Um … I was just out for a weisurely
strowl across your pwoperty with my twusty musket. I
certainwy was not pwanning to shoot anything ….” New
Jersey’s law made it easier to prosecute ol’ Elmer for
poaching, even if you couldn’t catch him in the act of
blasting a wabbit.
20 CARRALERO V. BONTA
And even if the “why” of New Jersey’s anti-poaching
law was more akin to Hawaii’s, New Jersey’s solitary
colonial law is an “outlier” and thus an inappropriate
analogue. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30. As the panel
acknowledged, other colonial laws that purported to adjust
the default presumption for carrying firearms onto private
property were “limited to only a subset of private property;
th[e]se laws likely did not apply to property that was
generally open to the public.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 994.
Maryland’s 1715 law, Pennsylvania’s 1721 law, and New
Jersey’s 1722 law were all limited to “seated plantations” or
“improved or inclosed lands.” 1715 Md. Laws 88–91, ch.
26, § VII; 1721 Pa. Laws, ch. 246, § III, reprinted in 3 James
T. Mitchell & Henry Flanders, The Statutes at Large of
Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 254–57 (Pa., Clarence
M. Busch, 1896); 1722 N.J. Laws 141–42. And New York’s
1763 statute covered just “Orchard[s], Garden[s], Corn-
Field[s], or other inclosed Land.” 1763 N.Y. Laws, ch.
1233, § 1, reprinted in 1 Laws of New-York from the Year
1691 to 1773 Inclusive, at 441–42 (N.Y., Hugh Gaine 1774).
Allowing Hawaii to presumptively outlaw carrying firearms
on all private property on the basis of an idiosyncratic anti-
poaching law amounts to “endorsing [an] outlier[] that our
ancestors would never have accepted”—precisely what the
Supreme Court has instructed lower courts not to do. Bruen,
597 U.S. at 30 (quoting Drummond, 9 F.4th at 226).
The second supposed analogue relied on by the panel is
an 1865 Louisiana law. Louisiana’s law prohibited
“carry[ing] fire-arms on the premises or plantation of any
citizen, without the consent of the owner or proprietor, other
than in lawful discharge of a civil or military order.” 1865
La. Acts 14–16, no. 10, § 1. It was enacted as part of
Louisiana’s notorious Black Codes that sought to deprive
CARRALERO V. BONTA 21
African Americans of their rights, including the right to keep
and bear arms otherwise protected by state law. See
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 771, 779
(2010); id. at 845–47 (Thomas, J., concurring) (detailing the
sordid history of these laws, which were part of the
“systematic efforts in the old Confederacy to disarm the
more than 180,000 freedmen who had served in the Union
Army, as well as other free blacks” (internal quotation marks
omitted)); Heller, 554 U.S. at 614; Koons, 673 F. Supp. 3d
at 568–69. The law was enacted right after the Civil War,
by a former Confederate State, before Louisiana was even
readmitted to the Union. Courts have correctly observed that
“[t]he Supreme Court has cautioned against relying on such
laws.” Kipke, 695 F. Supp. 3d at 659. In Bruen, the Court
explained that two discriminatory statutes were “too slender
a reed on which to hang a historical tradition of restricting
the right to public carry.” 597 U.S. at 58. Nor should our
court “infer a historical tradition of regulation consistent”
with Hawaii’s novel private property presumption from a
Black Code that was invidiously designed to undermine civil
rights. Kipke, 695 F. Supp. 3d at 659; see also Koons, 673
F. Supp. 3d at 568–69.
Applying the analytical framework provided by the
Supreme Court, it should be easy to see that the “why”
behind Louisiana’s law does not map onto Hawaii’s
purported “why.” Louisiana’s “intent was to discriminate,
rather than to advance public safety.” Kipke, 695 F. Supp.
3d at 659. This discriminatory animus is not part of the
history baked into our legitimate constitutional tradition, and
we “must exercise care to rely only on the history that the
Constitution actually incorporated and not on the history that
the Constitution left behind.” United States v. Rahimi, 602
U.S. 680, 723 (2024) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). Southern
22 CARRALERO V. BONTA
legislatures and their political supporters during
Reconstruction made efforts “to deprive colored citizens of
the right to bear arms ... and to reduce the colored people to
a condition closely akin to that of slavery.” H. Journal, 42nd
Cong., 2d Sess. 716 (1872) (statement of President Grant).
Louisiana’s 1865 law is part of that invidious tradition and,
far from being indicative of the Constitution’s meaning, is
“probative of what the Constitution does not mean.” Rahimi,
602 U.S. at 720 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).
And just as New Jersey’s 1771 law is an outlier,
Louisiana’s law too is a one-of-a-kind law, even in
comparison to other Reconstruction era laws. Only two
other states purported to adjust the default private property
presumption in this era—Texas in 1866 and Oregon in 1893.
See 1866 Tex. Gen. Laws 90, ch. 91, § 1; 1893 Or. Laws 79,
§ 1. But those states’ laws applied to only “enclosed
premises or plantation[s],” 1866 Tex. Gen. Laws 90, ch. 91,
§ 1, or “enclosed premises or lands,” 1893 Or. Laws 79, § 1.
Just as in the colonial era, only one law, on its face, applied
to properties generally held open to the public. The breadth
of Louisiana’s discriminatory law is a clear “outlier” in its
era and so for that reason too cannot form the basis of a
constitutional tradition. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29.
In sum, the panel’s broad principle—“that the Nation has
an established tradition of arranging the default rules that
apply specifically to the carrying of firearms onto private
property,” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 995—has no grounding in
the historical record. The panel abstracts from an anti-
poaching ordinance and a discriminatory Black Code—both
of which fail to share the same “why” as Hawaii’s law, and
both of which were clear outliers in their times in any event.
Since there is no historical tradition that supports Hawaii’s
private property default law, we should have taken this case
CARRALERO V. BONTA 23
en banc to fix the panel’s error in upholding Hawaii’s novel
law.
B.
The panel also erred in its approach for other locational
restrictions it upheld, and we should have taken these cases
en banc to correct those multiple departures from Bruen’s
and Rahimi’s framework for analogizing. See Bruen, 597
U.S. at 29–30; Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. First, even in
instances where the same or similar properties existed at the
Founding and the government pointed to no historical
prohibitions for those locations, the panel nonetheless
upheld the states’ modern bans by broadly analogizing to
unrelated historical laws. Second and relatedly, the panel
discounted the non-regulation of the same or similar
historical properties by pointing to purported changes in how
society now perceives those properties. And third, the panel
abstracted at too high a level of generality, pulling principles
out of historical precedent with little to no correlation
between “how and why” these historical regulations affected
the right to bear arms in self-defense and “how and why” the
Hawaii and California laws seek to ban the public carry of
firearms.
1.
The panel’s first methodological departure from the
analogical approach of Bruen and Rahimi is drawing
analogies to unrelated laws even where the same or similar
locations existed at the Founding, and the historical record
shows no historical tradition of regulating those locations.
Bruen instructs against that approach: “[w]hen a challenged
regulation addresses a general societal problem that has
persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly
similar historical regulation addressing that problem is
24 CARRALERO V. BONTA
relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is
inconsistent with the Second Amendment.” 597 U.S. at 26–
27.
Take one example from the panel’s opinion: its analysis
of California’s and Hawaii’s carry prohibitions in bars and
restaurants that serve alcohol. Cal. Pen. Code § 26230(a)(9);
HRS § 134-9.1(a)(4). The panel acknowledged that
“[e]stablishments serving alcohol have existed since the
Founding.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 986. Nor could it dispute
that “[c]onsuming alcohol was one of the most widespread
practices in the American colonies” and “[t]averns served as
the most common drinking and gathering place for
colonists.” Baylen J. Linnekin, “Tavern Talk” and the
Origins of the Assembly Clause: Tracing the First
Amendment’s Assembly Clause Back to Its Roots in Colonial
Taverns, 39 Hastings Const. L.Q. 593, 595 (2012). Because
the panel could point to no laws from that era outlawing the
carrying of firearms in those locations, the panel’s analysis
should have stopped there.
Instead, the panel looked to a panoply of laws separating
the storage of gunpowder from bars, limiting the carrying of
firearms while intoxicated, and restricting militiamen from
alcohol. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 985–86. From this broader
hodgepodge, the panel then abstracted a general principle:
“governments have regulated in order to mitigate the dangers
of mixing alcohol and firearms.” Id. at 986. And from laws
prohibiting carrying firearms at ballrooms and social
gatherings, the panel drew the principle of “prohibiting
firearms at crowded places, which included, at times, bars
and restaurants.” Id.
On the flimsy framework of these over-generalized
principles and four localized mid- to late-19th-century
CARRALERO V. BONTA 25
ordinances and territorial laws, the panel produced the
conclusion that “Hawaii’s and California’s modern laws are
‘consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory
tradition.’” Id. at 986 (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692).
Once again, the panel failed to heed Bruen’s instructions.
“[H]istorical analogues inconsistent with the ‘overwhelming
weight of other evidence’ are undeserving of much weight,
especially those laws that governed only a few colonies or
territories, affected a small population, or were enacted in
the late 19th century or later.” Id. at 978 (quoting Bruen,
597 U.S. at 66). The only colonial or Founding era laws that
the panel points to are those that separated the militia and
alcohol. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 985. Otherwise, the panel
primarily relies on later territorial laws (New Mexico in
1853), local ordinances (New Orleans in 1817 and 1879,
Chicago in 1851, and St. Paul in 1858), and late-19th-
century ordinances. While the panel does rely on three
Reconstruction era laws that prohibited carrying a firearm
while intoxicated—Kansas in 1867, Missouri in 1883, and
Wisconsin in 1883—our sister circuit has correctly
concluded that those same laws, even assuming they are
relevant, would “support, at most, a ban on carrying firearms
while an individual is presently under the influence.” United
States v. Connelly, 117 F.4th 269, 282 (5th Cir. 2024).
Moreover, the panel’s principle of banning firearms in
“crowded places”—which the panel drew from one local
ordinance (New Orleans in 1817) and several late-19th-
century laws banning carrying firearms in ballrooms and
assemblies—runs squarely into Bruen’s rejection of
Manhattan’s designation as a sensitive place “simply
because it is crowded and protected generally by the New
York City Police Department.” 597 U.S. at 30–31. In short,
26 CARRALERO V. BONTA
the panel stretched to draw principles from unrelated laws
that simply do not support its stated regulatory principle.
But I repeat: the panel should not have felt licensed to
extract principles from these unrelated laws in the first place.
When the same locations that existed at the Founding still
exist today, and there is no historical tradition of banning
carry in those locations at the Founding, that lack of
historical regulations must count for something. Indeed, in
most instances it should be dispositive. Bruen, 597 U.S. at
26–27.
2.
The panel used another feint to ignore the lack of
historical regulations of locations that have existed since the
Founding. The panel looked instead at how those types of
locations might have changed in the intervening years and
asked whether those Founding-era categories are sufficiently
similar to their “modern” equivalents. By adding this step,
the panel introduced yet one more path permitting our court
to broadly analogize from historical laws that on first blush
seem far afield from the modern law, especially as compared
to the glaring lack of historical regulation of the same
locations now being banned.
This is well-illustrated by the panel’s analysis of
California’s and Hawaii’s laws prohibiting carrying firearms
in “park[s].” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 982–85; HRS § 134-
9.1(a)(9); Cal. Pen. Code § 26230(a)(12). Even though
public parks existed well before the Founding and the states
provide no evidence of firearm bans from that time period,
the panel divined a historical tradition by redefining the
inquiry to search for more recent regulations of “modern”
parks. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 983.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 27
To be clear, the starting point for the panel’s historical
detour seems itself suspect. The panel concluded that
modern parks were too dissimilar to Founding-era parks
because today we use parks differently. Wolford, 116 F.4th
at 982. While I suppose it’s certainly true that the Founders
didn’t ride ten-speeds or talk on cell phones in public parks,
there is ample historical evidence of public parks used for
recreational purposes in the colonial and Founding eras. In
Massachusetts, Boston Common—established in 1634—
was used for drilling militiamen, but it “also served as a site
for informal socializing and recreation” including
“[s]trolling,” “[h]orse- and carriage-riding,” “sports,”
“entertainment,” and “raucous celebrations.” Anne
Beamish, Before Parks: Public Landscapes in Seventeenth-
and Eighteenth-Century Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia, 40 Landscape J. 1, 4–6 (2021); see also Steele
v. City of Boston, 128 Mass. 583, 583 (1880) (describing the
Common “as a place of public resort for the recreation of the
people” “from time immemorial”). In New York, City Hall
Park began as a “public commons” in the 17th century, and
Bowling Green was established as a place for the
“Recreation & Delight of the Inhabitants of this City” in
1733. The Earliest New York City Parks, N.Y. City Dep’t of
Parks and Recreation, available at https://perma.cc/MBM5-
FWRZ (last visited Jan. 2, 2025). In Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia was described by 1830 as a city with many
“public squares, and gardens” for “general resort” and
“promenade.” E.L. Carey & A. Hart, Philadelphia in 1830–
1, at 145–46 (1830). In New Jersey, Newark’s Washington
Park functioned as “a space for recreation.” See Washington
Park Newark, History, https://perma.cc/UC8K-5L8N (last
visited Jan. 2, 2025). And in Georgia, Savannah was
planned around open public squares, which were turned into
28 CARRALERO V. BONTA
landscaped parks around 1800. See Turpin Bannister,
Oglethorpe’s Sources for the Savannah Plan, 20 J. of Soc’y
of Arch. Hist. 47, 48 (1961).
Despite the undeniable presence of recreational-use
parks at the Founding, the panel—and California and
Hawaii—fail to provide any Founding-era laws prohibiting
firearms in those places. Again, their failure to do so should
be dispositive. Given that parks have “persisted since the
18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical
regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that
the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second
Amendment.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26–27.
But the panel did not stop there. To compensate for the
lack of any historical bans in public parks, the panel
reconceptualized parks at the Founding as merely “public
green spaces,” as opposed to the “outdoor gathering places”
that “modern” parks serve as today. Wolford, 116 F.4th at
982. The panel then redefined its inquiry—rather than
looking at the historical precedent at the time of the
Founding, the panel looked to precedent from the mid- to
late-19th century, when, according to the panel, “green
spaces began to take the shape of a modern park.” Id. After
reframing the inquiry in this way, the panel then cited a
panoply of laws restricting firearms in public parks, only one
of which—New York City’s—was dated prior to 1868,
when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Id. at 982–
83. But apparently because similar public parks didn’t exist
at the Founding (per the panel), the panel felt authorized to
derive its historical tradition from whatever time period the
panel concluded that such spaces started to exist in their
“modern” form.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 29
As was always the case when the panel turned to
analogizing, once it concluded that a “modern” place is
meaningfully different from its Founding-era precursors, the
outcome was predetermined. Each time the panel
determined that a type of location did not exist at the
Founding (or was too changed), the panel was able to find a
historical tradition broad enough to support banning firearms
in those locations. E.g., Wolford, 116 F.4th at 983 (parks
and similar areas); id. at 985 (playgrounds and youth
centers); id. at 987 (places of amusement). Apparently the
original understanding of the Second Amendment was that
it would not apply to any new types of public spaces that
would develop in the future.
But that is not how the Supreme Court has treated
changes between then and now. Under the panel’s approach,
the Second Amendment protects new “modern” firearms,
but not new “modern” places? Bruen confirmed—as did
Heller—that the Second Amendment applies to modern
arms: “even though the Second Amendment’s definition of
‘arms’ is fixed according to its historical understanding, that
general definition covers modern instruments that facilitate
armed self-defense.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 28; see also Heller,
554 U.S. at 582 (“[T]he Second Amendment extends, prima
facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even
those that were not in existence at the time of the
[F]ounding.”). But our court’s approach in these cases
allows judges to rule away Second Amendment rights from
modern places to the extent those locations differ at all from
their historical precursors—which, of course, they always
will. So even while an individual might have the right to
carry a modern firearm “in common use” today, see Heller,
554 U.S. at 627, under the panel’s reasoning that person may
only have the right to carry her modern firearm in primitive
30 CARRALERO V. BONTA
locations indistinguishable from those that existed at the
Founding.
3.
The panel’s approach in these cases also further
entrenched our court’s practice of analogizing at too high a
level of generality. The panel extracted very broad
principles from the historical record that could support the
constitutionality of almost any firearms restriction.
Whenever the panel analogized to historical regulations, it
found Hawaii’s or California’s laws constitutional. See
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 982–83 (parks and beaches); id. at 986
(bars and restaurants); id. at 987 (places of amusement); id.
at 993 (private property). This appearance of foreordained
outcomes is a strong hint that something is wrong with how
the panel analogized. Such predetermined results happen
because the panel inevitably extracted analogies at too high
a level of generality, precisely what the Supreme Court in
Bruen and Rahimi instructed lower courts not to do. Bruen,
597 U.S. at 30; Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692.
To guard against this tendency, the Supreme Court has
instructed that to confirm whether historical laws are
“relevantly similar” we must look carefully at the “how and
why” of the regulations; that is, “whether modern and
historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the
right of armed self-defense [the ‘how’] and whether that
burden is comparably justified [the ‘why’] are ‘central’
considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry.”
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29 (quoting McDonald, 561 U.S. at 767);
see also Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. The panel repeated these
instructions but failed to apply them.
The “regulatory principles” that the panel extracted from
the historical traditions bear little resemblance to the “why”
CARRALERO V. BONTA 31
behind the historical regulations to which the panel
analogized. For example, from laws limiting poaching and
hunting on private property, the panel drew the broad
principle “that the Nation has an established tradition of
arranging the default rules that apply specifically to the
carrying of firearms onto private property.” Wolford, 116
F.4th at 995. From, among others, laws segregating the
militia from alcohol, the panel drew the untethered principle
that governments can regulate “to mitigate the dangers of
mixing alcohol and firearms.” Id. at 986. And from laws
prohibiting the carrying of firearms at ballrooms and social
gatherings, the panel drew the exceedingly broad principle
of “prohibiting firearms at crowded places.” Id. With each
capacious “principle” the panel extracted from the historical
laws, it disregarded the narrow reason “why” those laws
were enacted.
And in reaching its overbroad analogies, the panel also
failed to consider “how” the historical regulations were
effectuated—that is whether the modern regulations
“impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-
defense.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29. For example, as discussed
above, from laws prohibiting the carrying of firearms
without consent on a small subset of private property—
enclosed lands—the panel concluded that all private
property can be presumptively excluded, effectively
rendering almost entire cities “no-carry” zones by default.
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 996. And from laws prohibiting
firearms at balls and other isolated social gatherings, the
panel concluded that firearms can be prohibited at all bars
and any restaurant that serves alcohol. Id. at 985–86. Put
simply, the breadth of California’s and Hawaii’s laws bears
no resemblance to the limited impact of the historical laws
the panel pointed to for historical support.
32 CARRALERO V. BONTA
By ignoring the “why” and the “how,” the panel ran
afoul of the Supreme Court’s warnings not to over-
generalize when drawing a historical analogy. Three
Justices have explained that the Court’s decisions in Bruen
and Rahimi do not license lower courts to abstract to such
high levels of generality. “[A] court must be careful not to
read a principle at such a high level of generality that it
waters down the right.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 740 (Barrett, J.,
concurring). “Courts must proceed with care in making
comparisons to historic firearms regulations, or else they risk
gaming away an individual right the people expressly
preserved for themselves in the Constitution’s text.” Id. at
711 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). And judges must not “let
constitutional analysis morph into policy preferences under
the guise of a balancing test that churns out the judge’s own
policy beliefs.” Id. at 736 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). By
employing such broad analogizing, the panel turned the
Second Amendment into a Rorschach inkblot—permitting
judges to reason from abstract, broad constitutional
principles whatever image of the right to bear arms that their
personal preferences compel. And in doing so, states are
given the very “regulatory blank check” that Bruen
instructed against. 597 U.S. at 30.
* * *
The panel’s acknowledgment that the results of its
analysis are both “arbitrary” and “[il]logical” should have
been a wake-up call that something was wrong and merited
correction by our court. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 1003. Not all
Second Amendment questions are straightforward, but these
cases presented one of the easier ones for our en banc court
to fix. It is unfortunate we failed to do so.
CARRALERO V. BONTA 33
IV.
There is one more reason we should have taken these
cases en banc. The panel unnecessarily created a circuit
split. By upholding Hawaii’s default private property rule,
the panel departed from the holding of every other court to
have considered similar private property default rules.
In Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 941 (2d Cir. 2024), the
Second Circuit held that New York’s enactment of a
similarly novel private property default rule violated the
Second Amendment as applied to private property open to
the public. Id. at 1048. The court concluded that “the State’s
analogues fail to establish a national tradition motivated by
a similar ‘how’ or ‘why’ of regulating firearms in property
open to the public in the manner attempted by [New York’s
private property default rule]. Accordingly, the State has not
carried its burden under Bruen.” Id. at 1047. The Second
Circuit reviewed a set of historical materials nearly identical
to those presented by Hawaii and California in these cases,
including both the 1771 New Jersey poaching law and the
1865 Louisiana Black Code relied on by the panel. Compare
id. at 1046–47, with Wolford, 116 F.4th at 994–96. The
Second Circuit concluded that “none of the State’s proffered
analogues burdened Second Amendment rights in the same
way as [New York’s private property default rule].”
Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1046. Instead, it observed that “[a]ll
of the State’s analogues appear to, by their own terms, have
created a default presumption against carriage only on
private lands not open to the public.” Id.
Each district court that has addressed similar laws has
also reached a conclusion at odds with this court’s. E.g.,
Kipke, 695 F. Supp. 3d at 659 (“[T]he Court finds that
Plaintiffs are clearly likely to succeed in their challenge of
34 CARRALERO V. BONTA
SB 1’s private building consent rule.”); Koons, 673 F. Supp.
3d at 607 (“[T]he Court concludes that the Default Rule
impermissibly burdens Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right
to carry for self-defense in public as applied to private
property that is held open to the public and for which an
implied invitation to enter is extended ....”); Christian, 2024
WL 4458385, at *11 (“The State’s criminal enactment
barring carrying of arms on private property open to the
public violates the Constitution.”).
With this panel decision upholding Hawaii’s default
private property law, our court once again becomes a Second
Amendment outlier among the circuits. We should have
corrected it en banc.
V.
With their new public carry bans, Hawaii and California
have effectively disarmed law-abiding Hawaiians and
Californians from publicly carrying during most of their
daily lives. Bruen said the Second Amendment protects a
“general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.” 597
U.S. at 31. It is hard to see how any such right “generally”
applies in Hawaii and California after our court has
sanctioned laws that flip the default rule into a “general
right” not to carry on private property or most public
property other than streets and sidewalks. If rigorously
applying the mode of analysis mandated by Bruen led us to
that shocking conclusion, perhaps we would be forced to
conclude that the Supreme Court simply misspoke in
characterizing the right to publicly carry as the “general”
rule. But as explained, the panel’s analysis fails to follow
the Supreme Court’s text-history-and-tradition guidance at
almost every turn. Because I believe the Second
CARRALERO V. BONTA 35
Amendment does not countenance that approach, I
respectfully dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.
Plain English Summary
FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARCO ANTONIO No.
Key Points
01FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARCO ANTONIO No.
02HAM; MICHAEL 8:23-cv-01798- SCHWARTZ; ORANGE COUNTY CJC-ADS GUN OWNERS PAC; SAN DIEGO COUNTY GUN OWNERS PAC; CALIFORNIA GUN RIGHTS ORDER FOUNDATION; FIREARMS POLICY COALITION, INC., Plaintiffs - Appellees, v.
03ROB BONTA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of California, Defendant – Appellant.
0423-4356 individual; ANTHONY MIRANDA, an individual; ERIC HANS, an D.C.
Frequently Asked Questions
FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARCO ANTONIO No.
FlawCheck shows no negative treatment for May v. Bonta in the current circuit citation data.
This case was decided on January 15, 2025.
Use the citation No. 10314251 and verify it against the official reporter before filing.