Suit was filed in a Texas federal district court earlier this week by a Unitarian Church (and another plaintiff) challenging a Texas law that makes it difficult to exclude individuals carrying firearms from one's property. The complaint (full text) in Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church v. Paxton, (SD TX, filed 9/2/2020) alleges in part:
Texas has ignored the First Amendment and enacted legislation that singles out a group with which it disagrees—those who prefer to keep guns off of their property—and selectively burdens their speech. Specifically, Texas property owners who espouse this viewpoint must post multiple large, text-heavy signs containing language specified by the State in order to exercise the longest established and most fundamental of their property rights: the right to exclude. If these property owners use other means of indicating that firearms are not welcome on the premises—even if entirely reasonable and understandable—they cannot avail themselves of Texas’s criminal trespass laws. By contrast, property owners who wish to exclude others for any other reason at all do not face these same burdens. This viewpoint-based discrimination was entirely intentional....
The Church has an official policy that forbids carrying firearms, whether open or concealed, onto church property.... One of the most fundamental religious tenets of the Church is to address conflict through conversation, non-violence, love, and compassion. The Church believes that the signs required by the Acts detract from those religious principles.
[Thanks to Scott Mange for the lead.]
