In addition to hearing oral arguments in Garland v. VanDerStok, which is a challenge to the ATF's rule treating unfinished frames and receivers as if they're functional firearms, the Supreme Court has granted cert this term to at least one other Second Amendment-adjacent case: Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, in which major U.S. gunmakers are trying to have Mexico's $10 billion lawsuit thrown out as a violation of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The Court will also get the opportunity to grant cert to Snope v. Brown, which is a challenge to Maryland's ban on so-called assault weapons; Ocean State Tactical v. Neronha, challenging Rhode Island's ban on "large capacity" magazines, and Oakland Tactical v. Howell Township, which involves a dispute over zoning laws and outdoor gun ranges. But there's one other 2A case that's pending before the Supreme Court that could pique the justices' interest, especially since the Hawaii Supreme Court has essentially dared SCOTUS to weigh in.
The cert petition in Wilson v. Hawaii asks the Court to address "whether the Bruen test determines when a State's criminal prosecution for carrying a handgun without a license violates the Second Amendment," but it also offers the opportunity for the justices to respond to the Hawaii Supreme Court's rebuke of the Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Christopher Wilson was arrested and charged with carrying a handgun without a license, at a time when the state of Hawaii wasn't issuing carry permits to anyone. Wilson never applied for a carry permit, likely because he knew he'd be denied, but the Hawaii Supreme Court rejected the Second Amendment-based arguments of his public defenders and instead declared that "the text and purpose of the Hawaii Constitution, and Hawaii’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, do not support a constitutional right to carry deadly weapons in public.”
Essentially, the Hawaii Supreme Court said state law (and territorial laws like "the law of the paddle") trump the U.S. Constitution and the protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins penned a lengthy opinion trashing the Heller, McDonald, and Bruen decisions and declared that Article I, Section 17 of the state constitution, which is identical to the text of the Second Amendment, only protects a collective right to keep and bear arms as part of a militia.
As Wilson's attorneys wrote in their cert petition:
It accused this Court of "handpick[ing] history to make its own rules" and declared that the Bruen test is "fuzzy," "backward-looking," and "unravels durable law." It held that the mere existence of a licensing scheme allows the State to prosecute. The State is now free to disregard Bruen and regulate protected conduct by criminally enforcing an unconstitutional licensing scheme. The holding sharply conflicts with this Court's decisions on the Second Amendment.
So what will SCOTUS do with Wilson? According to SCOTUSBlog, the case was first heard in conference on September 30, and has been relisted every week since, including the next conference scheduled to take place this Friday. The relisting doesn't guarantee that at least four justices are ready and willing to hear the case, however. It could be that one more justices is writing a dissent to object to the majority's decision not to grant cert, or the justices could simply still be debating whether or not to take the Hawaii Supreme Court's bait.
The biggest problem for Wilson and his attorneys may be the fact that while the Hawaii Supreme Court apparently feels free to disregard Heller and Bruen, the state legislature has at least paid lip service to trying to comply with the ruling. Hawaii has scrapped its "may issue" permitting system that was "no issue" in practice, and hundreds, if not thousands, of concealed carry licenses have been issued over the past two years. There are still legal challenges to some of the specific licensing provisions as well as the lengthy list of "sensitive places" where lawful carry is banned, but the legislature hasn't followed the state Supreme Court's lead in ignoring the Supreme Court's Second Amendment jurisprudence.
That may be reason enough to ignore the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision in Wilson, though doing so would open the door for even more mischief from lower courts when it comes to our Second Amendment rights. I'm hoping that SCOTUS will grant cert to Wilson along with the challenges to Maryland's "assault weapons" ban and Rhode Island's magazine ban, which could conceivably be combined into one case. That would make the Court's term a little top-heavy in terms of 2A cases, but these issues are so important that it would be a mistake to kick any of them down the road.
