Congregations win conceal-and-carry appeal
Edina Lutherans started the legal challenge.
Last June the Hennepin County District Court granted a temporary injunction against the notification provisions of the new Minnesota “conceal-and-carry” handgun law. More than a dozen congregations had brought the suit. But the same court denied other relief on the ground that the congregations “did not have standing.”
On January 13, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the denial, holding that the congregations were injured by the law as parking lot owners and landlords. The Court of Appeals ruled the congregations have the right to challenge the law as unconstitutional.
The case now goes back to the District Court. The congregations asked the Court of Appeals to affirm the right of religious institutions to ban all firearms from all of their properties. Edina Community Lutheran Church launched the case, which its member, attorney David Lillehaug, argued.
The Rev. Erik Strand, of Edina Community Lutheran, called the decision “[a] very important step in our efforts to worship and exercise our beliefs as we discern them.”
