Maryland can’t ban gun owners from carrying them in bars, near protests or in private buildings, judge rules

BALTIMORE — A federal judge has blocked portions of a 2023 Maryland law that would have prohibited licensed firearms owners from carrying them in bars, restaurants and private buildings without the owner’s consent.

U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell III also invalidated a separate Maryland ordinance that banned guns near public demonstrations.

But the judge upheld other gun restrictions in the new state law that have raised legal concerns, including a ban on carrying firearms in health care facilities, schools, government buildings, mass transit facilities, amusement parks, racetracks, casinos, museums, state parks and stadiums.

The decision reaffirms Russell’s ruling in September, when he issued a preliminary injunction blocking parts of the Gun Safety Act of 2023. Maryland lawmakers passed the bill in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling, which changed the legal framework used in Second Amendment cases and declared concealed carry laws in New York, Maryland and five other states unconstitutional.

The law restricts where people with Maryland State Police licenses can carry firearms in public. A group of plaintiffs, including several gun rights groups and Susannah Warner Kipke, wife of Anne Arundel County Del. Nic Kipke, sued in 2023 over the law and other similar gun laws.

Under the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, Russell had to assess whether Maryland’s gun laws had historical precedent. The judge found that some of the laws, such as the ban on carrying weapons on school and hospital grounds, were permissible under the U.S. Constitution because they were “consistent with the nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation.”

Other restrictions failed to pass. Russell found the state’s ban on carrying firearms in private buildings without the owner’s express consent to be unconstitutional, as were restrictions on carrying firearms in alcoholic establishments and within 1,000 feet of a public demonstration (after receiving a warning from a law enforcement officer).

“The devastating consequences of gun violence on Marylanders and the citizens of the United States are clear,” Russell wrote in September when he supported the remaining parts of the law. “Mandatory enforcement of Maryland’s firearm restrictions that either protect sensitive locations or are consistent with historic laws would undermine the public’s interest in preventing gun violence.”

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the ruling, which was first reported by Maryland Matters.

Mark Pennak, president of the gun rights group Maryland Shall Issue, which filed the lawsuit over the gun laws, said his organization is considering appealing the decision to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Court of Appeals.

“We are very pleased that the judge has affirmed what he ruled a year ago,” Pennak said, referring to Russell’s decision to invalidate restrictions on carrying guns in restaurants, at public demonstrations and in private buildings open to the public.

“It upheld the remaining injunctions challenged by the Kipke plaintiffs, and an appeal in that case is pending,” Pennak said.

Gun rights advocates in Maryland separately lost another appeal Tuesday before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court. The federal appeals court in Richmond upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban in an opinion that found regulating “excessively dangerous weapons” was consistent with the Second Amendment.

The 4th Circuit is considering another important gun control law in Maryland, a handgun licensing requirement. The full court heard the case this spring, as it did in the assault weapons case, but has not yet issued that opinion.

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