Twin Cities churches challenge gun law

08/23/2005

Pam Louwagie,
Star Tribune
August 23, 2005

“.... bans guns in these premises.”

By now these state-mandated words are familiar to Minnesotans wandering into buildings where firearm-toting visitors aren’t welcome.

Does that language interfere with the freedom of religion?

It was a central point of debate in a Hennepin County courtroom Monday as the state faced a challenge to its updated but still-controversial gun law.

The case, which also focuses on whether religious institutions may ban guns in their parking lots or in their buildings while being used by tenants, is making its second run in the court system. A similar challenge was brought against a 2003 version of the law, but arguments about the religious questions still lingered when a Ramsey County judge ruled that the law was improperly passed by the Legislature.

Hennepin Judge Marilyn Brown Rosenbaum ruled that the old law shouldn’t apply to religious institutions. A similar law was signed this year.

Attorneys for two Twin Cities churches asked Judge LaJune Lange to issue a temporary injunction against some of the law’s requirements as they apply to religious institutions.

David Lillehaug, attorney for the Edina Community Lutheran Church, and Marshall Tanick, representing the Unity Church of St. Paul, argued that requirements to put up signs using a specific size, typeface and language were infringing on the churches’ religious messages. Such requirements make the state an editor over the churches’ message, Lillehaug argued.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Ragatz argued that the law mandates that those signs contain state language and also allows churches to add religious language. He said that using the state-mandated, religiously neutral words is not a substantial burden and does not cause irreparable harm, two legal standards the churches must prove to get the injunction.

Lillehaug and Tanick argued that religious institutions shouldn’t be prohibited from banning guns in parking lots, either. Those areas are used to further religious missions when people talk about services on the way to their cars or when a church holds an event in a parking lot, they argued.

Ragatz argued that when a church is holding an activity in the parking lot for a religious purpose, it may ban guns under the law.

Lillehaug and Tanick also argued that by not allowing landlords to ban tenants and their visitors from carrying guns, the law burdens religious organizations. Edina Community Lutheran Church lets a day care use its space, for instance. And Unity Church makes space available to be used as a homeless shelter.

Would the homeless be considered temporary tenants from whom the church couldn’t ban guns? Tanick asked. Ragatz argued that they would clearly be considered church guests and that gun bans could be enforced.

Tanick argued that the ability to use additional wording, the ability to ban guns from parking lots during certain instances, and other arguments are not specifically spelled out in the law, making it flawed.

“The state is trying to amend the statute here in front of you, your honor,” Tanick argued.

Lange will issue a ruling later.