Hawaii’s 30-year ban on butterfly knives was overturned Monday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when the three-judge panel ruled that the right to carry the blade was protected by the Second Amendment.

Andrew Teter and James Grell sued the state attorney general and state Sheriff Division administrator in April 2019 after they were forced to give up their butterfly knives when they moved to Hawaii and couldn’t buy new ones for self-defense.

In May 2020, U.S. District Judge Alan C. Kay issued summary judgment in favor of the state.

On Monday, the 9th Circuit ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which found that packing hidden guns in public is a constitutional right, also applied to the knives, commonly known in Hawaii as the balisong.

“The panel held that possession of butterfly knives is conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment,” according to the opinion. “Bladed weapons facially constitute ‘arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment, and contemporaneous sources confirm that at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment, the term ‘arms’ was understood as generally extending to bladed weapons, and by necessity, butterfly knives. The Constitution therefore preemptively guarantees keeping and bearing such instruments for self-defense.”

The balisong is part of the Filipino martial arts of escrima that teaches self-defense as connected actions with sticks, the hands and the knife. Escrima predates Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the 1500s.

Teter and Grell’s attorney, Alan A. Beck, told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser in an interview that he and his clients feel “real good” about the court’s ruling and noted the importance of the balisong in Filipino culture.

“We think the balisong ban is simply nonsensical. There is no reason that a pocket knife should be banned from possession because it has a second handle,” said Beck. “As we established in the trial court, these weapons are used by (practitioners) of the Filipino martial arts. The state’s position has been that this is something that only criminals use and that is simply not the case. People carry these for self- defense all around the world and there is no reason they should be banned in the state of Hawaii.”

“Whoever knowingly manufactures, sells, transfers, possesses, or transports in the State any butterfly knife, being a knife having a blade encased in a split handle that manually unfolds with hand or wrist action with the assistance of inertia, gravity or both, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” reads a section of the Hawaii Revised Statutes.

In the reversal, U.S. Circuit Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote that the court concluded bladed weapons, like firearms, “facially constitute ‘arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment.”

The “scope of protection afforded by other constitutional rights extends to modern variants,” Bea wrote, meaning the Second Amendment “extends, prima-facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

“Like firearms, bladed weapons fit the general definition of ‘arms’ as ‘weapons of offence’ that may be ‘used in wrath to cast at or strike another,’” wrote Bea. “Moreover, contemporaneous sources confirm that, at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment, the term ‘arms’ was understood as generally extending to bladed weapons.”

The state Department of the Attorney General issued a statement Monday indicating they are reviewing the ruling.

“We are currently reviewing the decision and may have further comment at a later time,” according to an attorney general spokesperson.

Grell, a 51-year-old who does accounting for a water utility company on Hawaii island, praised the decision Monday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

“It seemed like a pretty obvious ruling to be made in light of all the recent Supreme Court decisions,” he said. “It’s good to see civil liberties prevail.”

Grell said he had owned a butterfly knife — a “relic” from his childhood in Colorado — before moving to Hawaii and saw no reason why he shouldn’t be able to keep it.

“It’s a knife I had since I was a teenager and it just never made any sense that I couldn’t bring it over here.”

The ruling, which may be appealed, has implications beyond Hawaii, including in California and other states that also ban or severely restrict butterfly knives, which have been targeted by lawmakers because they can be easily concealed and flipped open.

California bans “switchblades” — which include butterfly knives — when they have blades 2 or more inches in length. A separate lawsuit challenging that ban is pending.

The decision reflects the growing reach of the Supreme Court’s pro-gun rights decision last year in New York.

Since then, trial and appellate judges have found themselves sifting through century-old state statutes to determine the legality of hundreds of modern weapons restrictions in states all across the country — including on knives and billy clubs, assault weapons and ammunition magazines, and on the possession of guns by certain classes of people, including adults under 21 and people who are subject to restraining orders.

Bea wrote that Hawaii’s 1993 ban on butterfly knives did not meet the criteria because nothing like it existed around the historical benchmarks chosen by the Supreme Court as relevant for such analyses: 1791, when the Second Amendment was passed, or 1868, when the 14th Amendment was passed. The latter amendment prohibits states from depriving people of property without due process of law.

Bea, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, was joined in his opinion by Judges Daniel Collins and Kenneth Lee, both appointees of former President Donald Trump.

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The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.