In Silver Spring Jewish Community Center v. Montgomery County, Maryland, (D MD, Oct. 27, 2026), a Maryland federal district court denied a motion to amend a prior judgment in the case or alternatively to grant an injunction pending appeal in 2nd Amendment and Free Exercise challenges to a Montgomery County firearms law. The prior decision, while enjoining enforcement of a ban on firearms in plaintiffs’ synagogue, refused to enjoin a provision that prevents the synagogue’s rabbi who walks to synagogue on the Sabbath for religious reasons from carrying a firearm to the synagogue. His walk takes him past other places of public assembly. If he were driving to his synagogue, the law would permit carrying a firearm in the car even if it passed close to a place of public assembly. (See prior posting.) Again rejecting plaintiffs’ free exercise challenge, the court said in part:
Unlike their robust arguments about their sincerely held religious beliefs to carry a firearm within their places of worship, SSJC and Rabbi Shapiro provided much less about walking while armed through the 100-yard buffer zones to get there…. Their preliminary relief briefing … seems to emphasize how Jewish law obligates Rabbi Shapiro to walk to synagogue on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays but does not clearly articulate a religious mandate to do so while armed…. And in their complaint, each of the religious texts SSJC and Rabbi Shapiro provide seem to have been framed as supporting their desire to carry firearms as part of their Security Team within their place of worship, not carry firearms to such places….
But even if the 100-yard buffers incidentally burden religion, such laws “are ordinarily not subject to strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause so long as they are neutral and generally applicable.”… The 100-yard buffer provision is neutral because it does not discriminate on its face—it does not mention religion…. It is also neutral because it was not enacted “because of,” but instead “in spite” its effect on religion….
The 100-yard buffer provision is also generally applicable. A law is not generally applicable if it “prohibits religious conduct while permitting secular conduct that undermines the government’s asserted interests in a similar way.”… SSJC and Rabbi Shapiro contend that the court should have evaluated the vehicle exemption … as a comparable secular activity…. But the court did not do so because the vehicle exemption does not undermine the Code’s asserted interests “in a similar way” as non-secular carry by foot….