On July 21, 2026, the Montgomery County Council approved Expedited Bill No. 23-26, an ordinance barring the possession of a firearm in or within 100 yards of a “place of public assembly” — a definition that sweeps in privately owned churches, synagogues, and mosques. The prohibition binds Marylanders holding valid Wear and Carry permits issued by the State Police, and it binds them even when the congregation’s own leadership has expressly asked them to carry. Within days the county drew two separate responses: a federal lawsuit, Silver Spring Jewish Center Inc. v. Montgomery County, Maryland, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland on July 30, 2026, and a letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division threatening litigation of its own. Team 2A has the winning argument here.
A Fundamental Right That Stops at the Church Door
Begin with what the ordinance permits. A Montgomery County permit holder may carry a firearm into a supermarket, a coffee shop, a laundromat, or a hardware store. What that same citizen may not do is carry into the building where his congregation gathers to pray and worship — or, for that matter, walk within 100 yards of it. The county has drawn a line that leaves the ordinary commercial life of the county armed and protected, but has deliberately disarmed its houses of worship.
That distinction is indefensible on its own terms. Congregations are not incidental targets. They are chosen targets, selected precisely because worship is public, scheduled, and predictable, and the recent history of attacks on Jewish institutions in this country and abroad makes the point without elaboration. A rule that disarms the one category of gathering most likely to be attacked is not a public-safety measure. It is the manufacture of a soft target by law.
The Trump Justice Department’s Ultimatum
The Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, wrote to County Executive Marc Elrich setting out two constitutional defects and a deadline.
The Second Amendment analysis is straightforward. The Act regulates the carrying of arms, so its plain text is implicated and the burden shifts to the county to produce a historical tradition justifying the ban. The Department also invoked Wolford v. Lopez, 609 U.S. ___, No. 24-1046 (U.S. June 25, 2026), decided just weeks earlier, in which Justice Alito’s majority struck down Hawaii’s rule barring carry onto private property open to the public absent the owner’s express consent. Montgomery County has gone further than Hawaii did: it forbids carrying in a house of worship even with the owner’s express permission.
The First Amendment analysis is sharper still. Government may not burden religious conduct while leaving comparable secular conduct alone. Yet the ordinance places “place of worship” inside its definition of “place of public assembly” while omitting comparable secular gatherings at community centers or private homes. That is a targeted burden, and targeting is what converts an otherwise permissible regulation into an unconstitutional one — the same principle that distinguishes a general sales tax from a tax aimed at a particular right.
The letter closed without ambiguity:
“Please confirm in writing by email no later than noon EDT on July 31, 2026, that you will not enforce the Act’s prohibition on possession of a firearm in a place of worship, absent the property owner’s explicit prohibition. … If we do not receive such assurance, we will file a lawsuit without further notice.”
America’s Firearms Tradition Runs the Other Way
Under New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the county must identify a founding-era tradition of disarming worshipers. It will not find one, because the historical record points in the opposite direction. Where colonial legislatures believed congregations faced danger, they did not post the eighteenth-century equivalent of a no-guns sign. They compelled attendance under arms. Virginia required in 1631 that men bring their pieces to church; Georgia enacted a statute in 1770 obliging white male worshipers to carry firearms to places of public worship. Whatever else one makes of those laws, they are not evidence of a tradition of disarmament. They are evidence that the founding generation regarded an armed congregation as the answer to a threatened one.
Choosing the Right Plaintiff
The lawsuit also illustrates something I have argued for years about how the 2A movement should litigate. The Second Amendment’s worst days at the Supreme Court have come with unsympathetic claimants attached, and the Justice Department under Merrick Garland understood that when it selected Zackey Rahimi’s case as its vehicle. Facts matter, whatever the doctrine says.
Compare the plaintiffs here. Rabbi J. Menashe Shapiro is an ordained Orthodox rabbi who holds a Maryland Wear and Carry permit and a religious obligation he cannot delegate. The complaint alleges:
“The only path between his home and his synagogue requires him to walk within 100 yards of two public schools, two private schools, two parks, and three other houses of worship—each one a ‘place of public assembly’ subject to the Ban. Under the Ban, he may not carry a firearm as he passes by those locations—which means he cannot carry a firearm while walking to his synagogue.”
The complaint cites Grand v. City of University Heights, 159 F.4th 507, 509 (6th Cir. 2025), cert. granted, No. 25-965 (U.S. June 30, 2026). That is what a properly chosen Second Amendment case looks like: a claimant whose religious practice, whose route to worship, and whose state-issued permit all collide with a single county ordinance.
My expectation is that Montgomery County loses on one or both theories, that an injunction issues as to places of worship, and that if Montgomery County refuses to stand down, the Trump DOJ files suit and the cases are consolidated. The county has picked a fight it has no historical evidence to win.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.