“I want to understand how you think Black Codes should inform this Court’s decision-making. It’s quite an astonishing claim to me.”
Supreme Court justices grilled an attorney arguing on behalf of Hawaii for its law restricting the ability of gun owners to bring their firearms onto private property that is open to the public. The justices dug into Hawaii’s reliance on an 1865 Louisiana law that was part of the state’s Black Codes, which restricted the rights of formerly enslaved people, particularly the section that prohibited them from carrying guns on private property such as plantations without the owner’s consent.