DOJ Sues Maryland County for Infringing on Gun Rights – New Law ‘Tramples’ Basic Constitutional Freedoms
The article discusses a legal action initiated by the U.S. Justice Department against Montgomery County, Maryland. The county enacted a law that bans the possession of firearms within 100 yards of various public places, including polling sites, courthouses, government buildings, healthcare facilities, schools, parks, places of worship, and related parking areas. The Justice Department challenges this law, asserting that it violates the Second Amendment by restricting law-abiding citizens’ rights to carry firearms in daily life, even if they are duly licensed.
The lawsuit references a recent Supreme Court decision in Wolford v. Lopez, which emphasizes that laws banning guns in places people routinely visit hinder Second Amendment protections. The DOJ also notes that existing opposition from the Silver Spring Jewish Center and Rabbi J. menashe Shapiro, who argue the law infringes on their First, second, and Fourteenth amendment rights, particularly highlighting their need for security and religious obligations to carry firearms for protection. The law was enacted shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling and is viewed by opponents as overly restrictive, possibly impeding lawful gun owners' ability to carry firearms in public.
The Justice Department is taking a Maryland county to court after it passed a law festooning the county with gun-free zones where weapons are not allowed.
The lawsuit seeks to overturn Montgomery County’s gun control edict, according to a Justice Department news release.
The Justice Department said Bill 23-26 “violates the Second Amendment by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms in daily life.”
The bill makes it illegal to carry a gun within 100 yards of a wide variety of locations “even if the person carrying a firearm is duly licensed and has the express consent of the property owner,” the release said.
“The Second Amendment does not allow local governments to ban law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms in public places as they go about their daily lives,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.
“Montgomery County makes it almost impossible for a law-abiding citizen with a valid carry license to walk down the street and avoid these exclusion zones,” she added.
“The Civil Rights Division will not stand idle while Montgomery County tramples the rights guaranteed to law-abiding citizens by the Second Amendment,” Dhillon said.
The size of the 100-yard exclusion zone and the vast number of places where having a gun is banned combine to violate “the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wolford v. Lopez, where the Court held a law that bans citizens from carrying firearms into, ‘places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines… hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,’” the Justice Department said.
The Maryland law bans multiple types of weapons within 100 yards of what are defined as places of public assembly.
Those include any form of protest site, polling places, courthouses, legislative buildings, government offices, health care facilities, childcare, fairgrounds, schools, libraries, parks, places of worship, and any parking areas linked to those places.
The law was approved last month, weeks after the Supreme Court decision that overturned a Hawaii law banning anyone from carrying a gun on private property open to the public without the consent of the owner.
As noted by WUSA-TV, the law already faced a challenge from the Silver Spring Jewish Center and Rabbi J. Menashe Shapiro.
Shapiro and the synagogue said the law violates their First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, noting that the Jewish Center organized a volunteer security patrol after a 2024 incident.
“We brought this lawsuit to protect the right of our client, Silver Spring Jewish Center, and its members to defend themselves,” attorney Jacob Huebert said in a statement.
“We’re asking the court to block enforcement of the County’s ban on firearms in places of worship and within 100 yards of any place of assembly, and to declare that the law violates the First, Second, and Fourteenth Amendments,” he said.
“Talmudic and later religious sources command Jews to proactively provide their own security and the security of other Jews,” the synagogue said in its motion, according to Courthouse News.
“And, due to the threat environment that the synagogue and its members face, they consider it a religious obligation to ensure that at least some of the members carry firearms.”
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