His Tabernacle Family Church

Micheal Spencer is the lead and founding pastor of His Tabernacle Family Church, a nondenominational church with campuses in Horseheads and Ithaca, New York.  He believes that, “as the church pastor, he has a moral and religious duty to take reasonable measures to protect the safety of his congregation.”

Pastor Spencer is licensed under New York law to carry a concealed firearm, and he regularly carries his firearm on church campuses.  In recent years, the church has received “suspicious and threatening mail, and at least two death threats that prompted the involvement of law enforcement.”  In addition, the church’s campuses have been burglarized and vandalized.

But since the state of New York enacted a new law prohibiting firearms on church property, Pastor Spencer cannot protect his congregation from potential threats.

In late 2020, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, chiding New York for singling out religious groups and restricting how they worship in violation of the First Amendment.  And in June 2022, the Court issued its opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (“NYSRPA”), invalidating New York’s unprecedented effort to suppress the Second Amendment right to carry a firearm outside the home.  Rather than heed these losses before the Supreme Court, New York doubled down and doubled up, opting to infringe both constitutional rights at the same time.  Just days after its loss in NYSRPA, New York defied both of those rulings by establishing a total ban on carrying firearms in houses of worship, putting its religious residents to an impossible choice: either forfeit your First Amendment right to gather for worship, or forfeit your Second Amendment right to armed self-defense.

New York now imposes criminal liability on any person who carries a firearm into a place of worship regardless of whether that person possesses a license to carry a firearm under New York law, and regardless of whether the religious community would prefer to authorize congregants to carry a firearm.  This total-disarmament approach sharply contrasts with the more calibrated treatment that New York affords to most secular businesses: firearm carry permitted with the business owner’s authorization.  Thus, New York has targeted religious groups for disarmament and left them uniquely vulnerable to violence.

In November 2022, First Liberty Institute and the law firms Clement & Murphy PLLC and Ganguly Brothers PLLC filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of His Tabernacle Family Church.   A month later, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York issued a preliminary injunction against the state of New York, stopping the state’s prohibition on firearms at houses of worship, and allowing religious bodies to protect themselves as they gather for their services.

In his order, Judge John Sinatra said, “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the State permits countless other private actors hosting secular activities to do what a house of worship may not. The houses of worship exclusion is not a neutral law of general applicability.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the State of New York’s unconstitutional attempt to make His Tabernacle Family Church and all houses of worship in New York—gun-free zones. The court explained in its opinion that it is, “hard to see how the law advances the interests of religious organizations, as a whole, by denying them agency to choose for themselves whether to permit firearms.” 

New York had previously enacted expansive laws to prohibit the possession of firearms in houses of worship and other “sensitive” areas regardless of whether a person possesses a license to carry. 

Erin Murphy, Partner at Clement & Murphy said, “The court made it clear that houses of worship have a constitutionally protected freedom to decide for themselves whether to allow otherwise legally possessed firearms into their facilities.” 

“We applaud the decision by the court,” said Jeremy Dys, Senior Counsel for First Liberty Institute. “The court made it clear that the U.S. Constitution grants the right of self-defense for all Americans and houses of worship cannot be disarmed.  No American should be forced to sacrifice one constitutionally protected freedom to enjoy another.”