Before the Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in Wolford v. Lopez, I covered a range of Second Amendment issues central and tangential to the dispute over Hawaii's no-carry default rule. In opposition to the Court's Bruen decision, Hawaii enacted a "Vampire Rule" requiring prior consent for a licensed armed person to enter private property open to the public. Think stopping at a gas station or convenience store.
One issue that was alluded to several times in the argument is the scope of the so-called "sensitive places" limitation on the Second Amendment's protections. Wolford is not really a "sensitive places" case—it is actually about the handful of places Hawaii did not separately declare "sensitive," since the no-carry-default rule applies only to places that the state has not made no-carry-no-matter-what. Nevertheless, it is quite probable that in dealing with the issue the Court will touch on, and possibly explain, its previous statements on the issue.
The Court's "sensitive places" dicta have been the source of some significant confusion for courts and litigants alike. In District of Columbia v. Heller, as it struck down D.C.'s handgun ban, the Court cautioned that "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on … the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings." Later, in NYSRPA v. Bruen, the Court explained its statement in part as a way of demonstrating its historical method, writing that "although the historical record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century 'sensitive places' where weapons were altogether prohibited—e.g., legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses—we are also aware of no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions." But Bruen cautioned, "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."
