Today's Duluth News Tribune reports on arguments yesterday in a challenge by two churches to Minnesota's law on carrying of concealed weapons. (See earlier posting.) The churches, in a Hennepin County Trial Court, were seeking a temporary injunction against the enforcement of some of the law's provisions.
Attorneys for the churches argued that requiring signs with a specific size, typeface and language in order to prohibit guns in churches interferes with the churches' religious messages. The state responded that requiring specific religiously neutral words does not impose a substantial burden on the churches and does not cause them irreparable harm. The churches also argued that religious institutions should not be prohibited from banning guns in their parking areas, because those areas used to further religious missions when people talk about services on the way to their cars or when a church holds a fundraiser or services in a parking lot. The state said that when a church is holding an activity in the parking lot for a religious purpose, it may ban guns under the law. Finally the churches objected to provisions that prohibit landlords from banning tenants and their visitors from carrying guns, for example in child care centers or homeless centers operated out of church premises.
