WASHINGTON - The Justice Department filed suit against Montgomery County, Maryland, alleging the county’s newly enacted Bill 23-26 violates the Second Amendment by effectively prohibiting law-abiding, licensed citizens from carrying firearms as they go about daily life.
The complaint targets the ordinance’s ban on carrying firearms at thousands of locations across the county, compounded by a 100-yard exclusion zone around each site. The law applies even when a person holds a valid carry license and has the express consent of the property owner.
“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,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “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.”
Dhillon added: “The Civil Rights Division will not stand idle while Montgomery County tramples the rights guaranteed to law-abiding citizens by the Second Amendment.”
The department’s complaint rests on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wolford v. Lopez, in which the Court held that a law banning 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 breadth of Bill 23-26’s prohibition, the department argued, makes it practically impossible for individuals in the county to go about their daily business while lawfully carrying a firearm.
The suit was brought by the Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section, which enforces the Second Amendment, the Police Pattern or Practice Act (34 U.S.C. § 12601), and Executive Order 14206. The department has invited current or prospective gun owners who believe a state or local government has infringed their right to keep or bear arms to submit complaints through the section’s portal at justice.gov.
Montgomery County has not yet publicly responded to the lawsuit. The case will proceed in federal court, where the county will be required to answer the complaint.