The Washington Supreme Court ruled on June 11, 2026 that the state can strip gun rights from anyone convicted of two DUIs within seven years. The 5-to-4 decision upheld House Bill 1562, a 2023 law that dramatically expanded the categories of offenses triggering firearm prohibition. Four dissenting justices issued a blistering rebuke, accusing the majority of authorizing preemptive disarmament based on speculation rather than actual violent conduct.
The case of McLellan v. Brown began when two Washington residents had their concealed carry permit applications denied after multiple DUI convictions. A Spokane County Superior Court judge initially found merit in their constitutional challenge, but the state’s highest court reversed that decision and upheld the ban.
House Bill 1562 went into effect on July 23, 2023, after passing the legislature almost entirely along party lines. Representative My-Linh Thai sponsored the bill in the House with support from Representative Beth Doglio and over a dozen co-sponsors. The measure passed the House 51 to 45 and the Senate 28 to 21 before then-Governor Jay Inslee signed it into law.
The law marked a dramatic departure from Washington’s previous firearm prohibition framework, which had been limited primarily to felony convictions. For the first time, repeat misdemeanor DUI offenses became grounds for stripping Second Amendment rights. The statute even counts DUIs that were pleaded down to lesser charges like reckless or negligent driving, as well as offenses committed as a minor or in other states.
Justice G. Helen Whitener authored the dissent, joined by Justices Charles Johnson, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, and Salvador Mungia. Whitener focused on a key distinction that gun rights advocates view as decisive: a DUI conviction involves no intent to inflict physical harm. It is not a violent crime.
“The State is depriving individuals of their Second Amendment constitutional right to bear arms before they commit a violent crime on the assumption that one day they might,” Whitener wrote. She called the 2023 law an unconstitutional “outlier” that “violates the respondents’ constitutional rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Writing for the 5-to-4 majority, Justice Steven González held that the state met its historical burden under Bruen by pointing to three enduring principles: the tradition of disarming groups deemed dangerous by legislatures, restricting firearm possession for serious crimes, and founding-era regulations restricting firearm use by presently intoxicated individuals.
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The dissent invoked the analytical framework established by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022 and United States v. Rahimi in 2024. Those decisions require any gun regulation to align with the historical tradition of firearm regulation at the time of the Founding. Rahimi specifically held that disarming someone requires proof they pose a genuine current danger.
Gun rights organizations have been building legal arguments against exactly this type of categorical disarmament. The Second Amendment Foundation filed an amicus brief in a related Third Circuit case in December 2025, challenging a lifetime federal gun ban over a decades-old misdemeanor DUI. SAF’s Director of Legal Research and Education, Kostas Moros, argued that “the government’s position defies Bruen and Rahimi,” stating that “History shows that Founding-era laws addressed the risks of intoxication and firearms through temporary restrictions on those currently impaired, never by stripping gun rights forever from someone who once drank irresponsibly but has since reformed.”
SAF has also advanced the broader historical argument that Founding-era laws only addressed the danger of mixing intoxicants and firearms by temporarily disarming the actively impaired, never by permanently stripping gun rights from people who used a substance in the past but posed no current threat.
The Firearms Policy Coalition has pursued parallel litigation. In a Supreme Court brief filed in Holloway v. Attorney General Garland, a case involving a Pennsylvania man stripped of gun rights after a misdemeanor DUI, FPC argued that “Mr. Holloway would not have forfeited his Second Amendment rights for driving under the influence in the vast majority of states,” making his permanent disarmament a function of geography rather than constitutional principle.
William Kirk, president of Washington Gun Law and a prominent Second Amendment attorney, has argued that the historical tradition around substances like alcohol only supports restricting firearm possession while actively intoxicated, not categorical status-based disarmament after the fact.
The Cato Institute has taken a similar position, stating in an amicus brief that “while driving under the influence is not admirable conduct, it is not usually the type of offense that means a person should be permanently unable to possess a gun” and that “looking at the maximum punishment of an offense is the sort of broadly prohibitory approach that the Supreme Court said is impermissible.”
Even before the bill became law, the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers opposed it, calling its list of new prohibiting crimes “too expansive.”
Gun rights advocates are widely expected to pursue a federal appeal. The Washington ruling stands as a test case for how far states can push categorical disarmament under the post-Bruen legal landscape. For Second Amendment supporters, the answer is clear. The Constitution does not permit the government to strip fundamental rights from citizens who have harmed no one, based solely on the statistical possibility that they might one day pose a danger.
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About José Niño
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can contact him via Facebook and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
If someone with a DUI history is considered dangerous – why are they ever allowed to drive again?
Washington Supreme Court should have waited for the SCOTUS Hemani opinion before finalizing theirs. Or maybe they rushed to get this out before there was guidance to direct them.
Here’s what this is, a Camel’s Nose. If they aren’t allowed to ban guns they’ll just expand the list of Prohibited Persons categories until it covers everyone, one misdemeanor or other DQ at a time, until only those that fall into a Specially Designated Class can bypass their Prohibited Person status.
Look at the history of seatbelt laws an how that ballooned. They’ve played this game multiple times before, and they will keep playing it until someone flips their card-table in court.
And we still trust our government ??? not me.
Another reason to have extreme dislike of SCOTUS’ “historic” test – the intentional distortion of the intent, purpose, and effect of early firearms laws. Generally, I’m not a fan of Bruen’s test of a statute’s consistency with “the Nation’s historical record of firearms regulation.” It presumes that any such regulation was constitutional. The constitutional status of a statute never challenged can’t be known and shouldn’t be presumed to be constitutional. Statutes challenged and not struck can’t be known to NOT be unconstitutional, because our courts don’t rule that statutes are constitutional, they rule that statutes are not unconstitutional for the… Read more »
IMO, if we are carrying a gun, we shouldn’t be drinking alcoholic beverages or doing psychoactive drugs.
If someone is carrying at the time of their DUI, I could see them losing their LTC. a handgun, for the same period, their drivers license was suspended, no more, no less.
I’m surprised this was a narrow split decision. After all this state has been in the grip of communist rule for over 40 years and many conservative leaning residents have fled to Free States.
As we know, elections have consequences which is why it’s incomprehensible that evangelicals and too many gun owners sit out elections. I wish those subgroups of voters would have woken up 20 years ago maybe then we would have a different political complexion but now it’s going to take divine intervention to make significant change. Too many people with common sense are living free elsewhere.
There was a news story on TV called driving while sober
It seems the police in Nashville, Tennessee ( and other cities) pull over .motorist at random and say they suspect the driver is driving while drunk
The police take them to the station, run tests on them, then let them go when blood alcohol comes back at 0.
But it makes the police look ‘ good’ by pulling over all these ‘drunk drivers’
There are now several law suits against the police departments and city.
Plus, the drivers insurance will skyrocket if it isn’t canceled by the insurance company.
Driving is a privilege that is too often is treated as a right. Carrying a firearm is just the opposite. Denying a RIGHT due to the loss of a PRIVILEGE doesn’t sit well with me. I, personally, have run into bad law enforcement and judges (Tampa, FL) and know just how easy it would be to strip someone of their Constitutional Rights due to a lazy LEO making his monthly quota of traffic citations.