Washington, D.C., July 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Montgomery County, Maryland just imposed Expedited Bill 23-26 banning even licensed firearm holders from carrying a firearm within 100 yards of houses of worship and other “places of public assembly.” It prohibits members of the local Jewish community from defending themselves as they go to their synagogues multiple times a day, pray together as their religious commitments require, and leave. This defies their tradition’s mandate to protect themselves and their fellow Jews when necessary. The new law creates serious constitutional problems, especially in light of recent attacks on Jewish people and institutions across the country.
Representing the Silver Spring Jewish Center, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed the Silver Spring Jewish Center, et al. v. Montgomery County lawsuit today alongside Rabbi J. Menashe Shapiro, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland to rule that Expedited Bill 23-26 is unconstitutional. NCLA asks the Court for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction prohibiting authorities from enforcing the new law now.
Expedited Bill 23-26 violates the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion by prohibiting synagogue members from acting according to their beliefs. It also violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by making decisions in place of religious leaders. The law denies the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and deprives the Jewish community and others of equal protection under the law by discriminating on the basis of religion, a Fourteenth Amendment violation.
Last month, the Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that banned firearms from private property unless the property owners explicitly permitted them, ruling in Wolford v. Lopez that those rules violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Expedited Bill 23-26 is even more restrictive, taking away religious people’s right to carry firearms on their own community’s property for their own defense.
NCLA released the following statements:
“Montgomery County’s law prevents our client from defending its members from the threat of anti-Semitic attacks and from fulfilling their religious obligations. It brazenly violates the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the courts should swiftly strike it down.”
—Jacob Huebert, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA
“Montgomery County’s ordinance flies in the teeth of the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment rulings. If states cannot flip the presumption and forbid carrying a legal firearm without advance permission from various premises, then surely municipalities cannot go a step further and bar premises from giving permission. It boggles the mind in the current anti-Semitic climate that the County would deny a synagogue the ability to defend worshippers as it sees fit. Such interference in the internal management of a place of worship violates the First Amendment, too.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President and Chief Legal Officer, NCLA
For more information visit the case page here.
ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.
Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 joe.martyak@ncla.legal
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