Denver, CO – June 24, 2021 – Today, Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms (CKBA) is urging the United States Supreme Court to take up an appeal brought by George K. Young, Jr., who has fought—since 2011—to have constitutionally protected gun rights honored in Hawaii.
CKBA filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of Young v. Hawaii, supporting Young’s petition to the Supreme Court as he challenges Hawaii’s de facto ban on the open carrying of firearms. Young’s case has followed a lengthy court journey, declaring initial victory and later reversal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
While Hawaii technically allows open carry with a permit, that permit is nearly impossible for anyone to acquire. In 2011, it was denied to George Young, a Japanese-Hawaiian senior citizen who carried firearms professionally during 21 years in the Army and 17 years in airport security.
Young’s personal safety concerns were deemed insufficient under Hawaiian law, where residents applying to carry firearms in public openly must prove “the urgency or the need” to do so and must be “engaged in the protection of life and property.”
Under these circumstances, the local chief of police “may grant” the requested permit—but almost never does. Only four such permits were granted between 2000 and 2020.
Initially representing himself without a lawyer, Young sued the state of Hawaii in 2012. Although he lost his case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii that year, an appeal to the Ninth Circuit resulted in a tentative 2018 victory: a Circuit panel found Hawaii’s open carry licensing scheme unconstitutional.
In March 2021, however, an en banc Ninth Circuit did a dramatic about-face. It found no constitutional problem with Hawaii’s extremely restrictive permitting scheme—and, effectively, no right at all to bear arms outside one’s home.
The full Ninth Circuit’s opinion also compared open carriers to terrorizing criminals and suggested that the mere presence of arms in the public square was a challenge to government authority.
“George Young’s perseverance in this case is inspiring,” says Cody J. Wisniewski, Director of MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms. “He’s spent a decade fighting for the rights of Hawaiians—and, ultimately, all Americans.”
“The original Ninth Circuit panel got this case right the first time when it held that Hawaii was violating the right to bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment.”
“But the Ninth Circuit went on to effectively wipe out a basic natural right of the People, as well as engaging in disturbing distortions of history. The Supreme Court shouldn’t allow the Ninth Circuit’s misapplication and misinterpretation of history to stand—especially at the cost of the rights of millions of Americans.”
In its brief to the Supreme Court, the Center to Keep and Bear Arms argues that the court should hold Young’s case over until a decision is reached in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett (“NYRSPA”), a major gun rights case due to be heard in the 2021-22 term. That case also involves an extremely restrictive licensing scheme for firearms outside the home, which gun rights advocates hope will be struck down.
Once the NYSRPA case is decided—CKBA argues—the Supreme Court should grant certiorari in Young v. Hawaii, vacate the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, and send Young’s case back to the lower court for further proceedings in light of NYSRPA. This would prevent the Ninth Circuit’s deeply flawed March 2021 opinion from being cited as precedent in the future—while hopefully also forcing the circuit to reverse course and uphold gun rights.
Follow this link to read the case page.
Follow this link to read the filing.
Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are located outside Denver, Colorado.