WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court slapped down Hawaii’s so-called “vampire rule” Thursday, ruling that requiring gun owners to get permission before bringing firearms on private property open to the public is unconstitutional.

In a 6-3 decision, the high court concluded that the Hawaii law flouted the Second Amendment and common law precedent.

“The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States … It cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii … any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald),” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion, quoting a widely mocked Hawaii Supreme Court opinion upholding the law and referencing past gun cases decided by the justices.

The Aloha State had passed Act 52 — which applied to places like stores, hotels and gas stations — in 2023. The law acquired the “vampire” nickname in a nod to “Dracula” lore that bloodsucking monsters cannot enter homes without an invitation. 

Violators faced up to one year behind bars. Other states, such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, have similar laws in place.

Alito’s opinion raised a hypothetical scenario of a woman being searched in the parking lot of a grocery store in response to the law. 

“During all the time this search goes on, our hypothetical young woman will be violating the terms of the statute, and if that is brought to the attention of the police … she may be charged with a criminal offense or lose her license,” Alito contended. “And in the end, she may be unable to shop because she cannot find anyone who has been authorized by management to consent.”

The conservative justice griped that Hawaii required “express authorization” for gun owners to enter private property left open to the public, “[r]ather than allowing all to enter private property open to the public unless specifically prohibited.”

Lawyers defending the Hawaii law had referenced the Black Codes, post-Civil War segregationist laws that limited the rights of African Americans, to point to a tradition of similarly restrictive gun control measures in American history.

“Unless we put history entirely out of our minds, Hawaii’s claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously,” Alito jabbed. 

The San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the Hawaii law in 2024.

Both Democrat-appointed Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson penned dissents, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor joining Jackson. Kagan focused on colonial and founding-era laws that “prohibited carrying firearms into private property without the owner’s affirmative consent.”

Jackson’s blistering 32-page dissent, which was longer than the majority opinion, cited Hawaii’s history as a sovereign kingdom prior to its annexation by the US in 1898 to argue the state “never permitted the widespread carrying of firearms in its territory.”

“Hawaii’s law does not restrict the right to carry a gun at all. Instead, its law vindicates its resident’s property rights by operating on the scope of the implied license to enter,” Jackson wrote. “And it does so by requiring gun owners to seek express consent, rather than assume implied consent.”

The decision in Wolford v. Lopez is the latest in a series of wins for gun rights advocates, including last week’s ruling that can’t be completely restricted from owning guns, which weakened a law that played a role in the prosecution of former first son Hunter Biden.

“Law-abiding gun owners will no longer be forced to beg for special permission simply to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in public places,” said John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislation Action, in a statement.

“The NRA celebrates this important win, but it is only another stepping stone in our unrelenting fight to fully restore the Second Amendment rights of all Americans nationwide.”