DOJ Sues Montgomery County — Wolford Says Daily Carry Can’t Be a Maze of Gun-Free Bubbles

On August 3, 2026, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed suit against Montgomery County, Maryland, over newly enacted Bill 23-26. The complaint alleges the ordinance violates the Second Amendment by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms in daily life — including people with valid carry licenses and property-owner consent.

DOJ says Bill 23-26 bars carry at thousands of locations and wraps each site in an “arbitrary 100-yard exclusion zone.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon put the practical result in plain English: the map of banned buffers makes it “almost impossible for a law-abiding citizen with a valid carry license to walk down the street and avoid these exclusion zones.”

The department ties the lawsuit directly to the Supreme Court’s recent Wolford v. Lopez holding. Per DOJ’s press release, Wolford held that laws banning arms in “places that people routinely visit in the course of their daily routines” hobble the Second Amendment right to carry for self-defense as Americans go about daily life. Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich signed the bill July 27 with school-zone and house-of-worship framing; a parallel NCLA suit for Silver Spring Rabbi J. Menashe Shapiro already challenges the synagogue-side self-defense ban.

This is the Trump DOJ Second Amendment Section enforcing Executive Order 14206 against a deep-blue local government — not a symbolic memo. If a preliminary injunction lands, Bill 23-26 stops while the case proceeds.