Getty images via Michigan Advance.
The state cannot keep gun owners from carrying their weapons in bars, within 1,000 feet of a public demonstration or on private property without the owner’s permission, a federal judge has ruled.
But U.S District Judge George L. Russell III, in an opinion handed down Friday, upheld much of the rest of the Gun Safety Act of 2023 that had been challenged as unconstitutional by gun-rights groups. In a three-page order, Russell sided with the state’s claims that it can bar gun owners from carrying in amusement parks, casinos, state parks and forests, museums, schools, stadiums and government buildings, among a range of other sites.
The order accompanied a 14-page opinion that basically confirmed Russell’s findings in September, when he temporarily blocked enforcement of the bar, protest and private property restrictions in the law.
The ruling was on a complaint filed in 2023 by Susannah Warner Kipke, the wife of Del. Nicholaus R. Kipke (R-Anne Arundel), and the Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association, challenging the law on First, Second and 14th Amendment grounds. A separate, but similar, challenge was filed by Katherine Novotny and a gun-rights advocacy group she belongs to, Maryland Shall Issue, along with the Second Amendment Foundation.
Russell combined the complaints into one case.
The attorney general’s office said it would have no comment on Russell’s ruling Monday. But Maryland Shall Issue President Mark Pennak said “appeal is certainly under consideration” by his group over the split ruling, although no decision has been made yet.
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To “say the state can ban carrying in state parks and state forests, we think is just plainly wrong,” Pennak said. “But we’re pleased with the fact that they [the court] did a preliminary injunction from September, but not pleased in sustaining the other portions.”
Pennak said that, “No one is advocating drinking alcohol and carrying, but the state’s ban is much broader.”
“It prohibits a permit holder from going inside a restaurant that otherwise serves alcohol … even if the permit holder doesn’t want to drink at all,” he said. “They sought to basically ban carrying in many places that they thought they could get away with. That’s just wrong under the Constitution.”
The Kipke lawsuit was filed last year on the same day Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed Senate Bill 1, or the Gun Rights Safety Act of 2023, into law. Russell issued his preliminary injunction in September on the three provisions, just days before the law was to take effect.
The law changed the state’s gun permitting process and placed restrictions on where guns may be carried in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which effectively struck down Maryland’s prior gun permitting laws that limited concealed-carry permits.
Maryland’s new law created three broadly defined types of locations where people would be prohibited from carrying guns: areas for “children and vulnerable individuals,” areas of “government or public infrastructure” and a “special purpose area,” or places where the public gathers for entertainment, education or other social events.
Del. J. Sandy Bartlett (D-Anne Arundel), vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee that reviewed the legislation last year, responded to Russell’s ruling Monday evening.
“The decision limits state action, but not the private owner’s right to restrict the carrying of firearms on to private property,” she said in a text message. “I hope gun owners will respect private owner’s choice to refuse entry.”
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