The Silver Spring Jewish Center is appealing to the Fourth Circuit to overturn Montgomery County’s firearm regulations that bar congregants from exercising their right to carry guns.
In July, Montgomery County, Maryland, enacted a prohibition on firearms in any “place of public assembly,” a category the county defined to include parks, schools, and houses of worship, or within 300 feet of such sites. Three days after the ordinance took effect, the Silver Spring Jewish Center (SSJC), an Orthodox synagogue, filed suit against the county, contending that the measure unlawfully disarms worshippers at a time of increasing antisemitic threats. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in September, allowing permit holders to carry inside the synagogue while leaving the 300-foot rule in place for pedestrians, though it did not apply to drivers.
That ruling, as the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty notes, produced “a bizarre constitutional catch-22 where Jews can carry firearms inside the synagogue, but they cannot cross the street to bring them there.” This week the SSJC and Menashe Shapiro, a congregant who is also an ordained rabbi, petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to correct that perplexing situation, asserting that it infringes the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment right to armed self-defense and their First Amendment right to freely practice their religion.
“Protecting synagogue members’ right to carry within their own place of worship while prohibiting them from carrying to the entrance accomplishes nothing,” says Becket Fund Senior Counsel Eric Baxter, who represents the SSJC alongside attorneys from the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA). “We’re asking the Fourth Circuit to put an end to this assault on Marylanders’ bedrock constitutional rights.”
The plaintiffs note that antisemitic incidents have grown more frequent since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the ensuing Gaza war. “For instance, in October 2024, a visibly Jewish member was assaulted just outside the building, and in June 2026, an unknown individual attempted to gain entry.” In response, the SSJC established “an armed volunteer security team” made up of carry-permit holders such as Shapiro.
Beyond prohibiting those volunteers from bringing their firearms into the synagogue after they park nearby, Montgomery County’s law, even as modified by U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow’s injunction, creates a unique challenge for Orthodox Jews who do not use automobiles on the Sabbath or on holidays with restrictions of a similar kind. That means SSJC members cannot even legally transport their guns to the vicinity of the synagogue on those days, since walking would bring them within 300 feet of parks, schools, and other houses of worship.
“The Second Amendment protects everyone’s right to carry a firearm as part of daily life,” notes Jacob Huebert, senior litigation counsel at the NCLA. “The First Amendment protects the right to freely exercise one’s religion. The 100-yard rule deprives Silver Spring Jewish Center members of both.”
Although Montgomery County’s buffer zones appear to be aimed at safeguarding public safety, they have the opposite effect in relation to the SSJC. “Our synagogue has long served as a sanctuary where Jews can worship, pray, and gather in peace,” says SSJC Rabbi Yaakov Greiniman. “As antisemitic violence becomes more widespread and brazen, we have a religious obligation to defend our congregation. Montgomery County has made that impossible.”
The SSJC’s Second Amendment challenge rests on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the 2022 Supreme Court decision recognizing that the constitutional right to bear arms includes the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Under Bruen, restrictions on that right must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” To satisfy that standard, Montgomery County bears the burden of identifying historical analogs that are “relevantly similar” to its law in both motivation and scope.
The county has identified “no historical support for a 100-yard buffer around places of worship,” the plaintiffs contend. With respect to parks, they argue, the local ordinances cited in prior litigation are insufficient to establish a historical tradition. They observe that “three of the five ordinances come from Pennsylvania, so only three States are represented” and that most were enacted in the late 19th or early 20th century.
Chasanow believed there was a historical tradition supporting Montgomery County’s buffer around schools. However, she relied on a case from the Eastern District of California dealing with the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, which contains an exception for individuals with state-issued carry permits. “The federal statute is therefore not sufficiently similar to Montgomery County’s law,” the plaintiffs assert.
Montgomery County offered several additional purported historical analogs, including polling-place laws that “do not concern places of worship, parks, or schools” and that applied only on election or registration days. Its other examples were similarly inapt. In short, the county “has identified no historical tradition of banning firearms within 100 yards of places of worship, parks, or schools.”
The plaintiffs also maintain that Montgomery County’s law infringes on religious liberty. “Talmudic and later religious sources command Jews to actively ensure their own security and the security of other Jews,” they argue. “Given the current threat environment, SSJC views it as a religious obligation to ensure that at least some members carry firearms.” They add that Shapiro “holds the sincere religious belief that Jewish law requires him to carry a firearm for personal, family, and communal protection, a duty he must fulfill personally.”
Chasanow agreed that “SSJC and Rabbi Shapiro have demonstrated a burden on their sincere religious practice.” She also concluded that Montgomery County’s prohibition on guns in places of worship implicates the Free Exercise Clause because it is not “neutral and generally applicable,” noting that it does not cover fraternal lodges and “numerous other privately owned businesses and properties” where people gather. Chasanow said the law was therefore subject to “strict scrutiny,” a demanding standard that the county did not even attempt to meet: “Defendants have not shown whether the law’s application to places of worship is the ‘least restrictive means of achieving some compelling state interest.’”
The plaintiffs contend that Chasanow erred by treating their challenge to the buffer zones as facial, meaning they would have to show the rules were unconstitutional in every application. Given the specific relief they seek, they argue, it should have been clear that they were challenging the restrictions as applied to them.
“It takes a lot of chutzpah to trample on the First and Second Amendments at the same time,” Shapiro remarks. “Yet that’s precisely what Montgomery County has done here, forcing Jews to choose between different tenets of their faith and at the same time compromising their safety. Our Constitution forbids such impossible choices. I pray the court ends this senseless ban for good and allows my community to defend itself against threats.”
