By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Trump Justice Department has spent the year suing Democratic cities and counties over their gun laws, casting the federal government as the enforcer of the Second Amendment against local overreach.

This week a federal judge threw one of those suits out, and the reason should give the administration pause: not because the gun law was sound, but because Washington had no business bringing the case at all.

Where the energy is moving

The flow here runs against the federal government and toward the states, on a point of principle conservatives usually champion. On November 9, Judge Theodore Chuang of the US District Court in Maryland dismissed, with prejudice, the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to strike down a Montgomery County ordinance that bars firearms within 100 yards of “places of public assembly,” a category that sweeps in parks, schools, hospitals, libraries, and houses of worship. (SOURCE HERE)

The county passed the law in July. The Trump DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued in August, arguing the ordinance violated the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wolford v. Lopez. What is notable is the ground the judge chose to rule on.

A loss on power, not on guns

Chuang did not say the gun law was constitutional. He said the federal government lacked the authority to sue over it in the first place. The Justice Department, he found, had never before used the 1994 crime law it invoked to attack a state or local statute “solely to invalidate” it, absent any allegation that local police had actually violated someone’s rights, and this suit was exactly that, a facial challenge devoid of any claim of real-world misconduct.

In other words, the administration lost on federalism, not on the Second Amendment. For a movement that spends much of its energy objecting when Washington reaches into state and local affairs, it is an awkward and clarifying defeat: the DOJ asserted a sweeping new power to police local laws, and a court said no.

The next front

The gun fight in Montgomery County is not over; it has simply moved to a plaintiff with a stronger claim. A separate suit, brought by the Silver Spring Jewish Center and its rabbi and represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, won a partial injunction in September letting congregants carry inside the synagogue, while the ordinance’s 100-yard rule still blocks them from carrying on the walk there.

This week, the group asked the Fourth Circuit to let worshippers carry on the way to and from services, turning the case into a test of religious liberty and self-defense. That is the live front now, and it is a far more sympathetic vehicle than a Justice Department facial challenge.

In their own words

“The federal government should not have unfettered authority to intrude on the actions of state and local governments,” Judge Theodore Chuang wrote in the opinion dismissing the Justice Department’s suit. (SOURCE HERE)

What to watch next

This week is a lesson in how you win and how you lose. The administration’s instinct to go on offense against restrictive local gun laws is popular on the right, but the vehicle matters: a federal lawsuit asserting novel power to erase local ordinances invites exactly the federalism objection that a conservative court was happy to supply.

The stronger path runs through individual plaintiffs with concrete injuries and constitutional claims, which is why the synagogue case at the Fourth Circuit is the one to watch.

For the donor or the litigator, the takeaway is that the Second Amendment advances further through well-chosen as-applied challenges than through a Justice Department pressing its own authority. The reporting lays out the judge’s reasoning. (VISIT HERE)

Facts are prickly things,

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · November 12, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR