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.
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