Judge Upholds Texas Firearm Ban for Bars, Schools, Stadiums

Texas can continue to ban firearms from school events, bars, stadiums, and racetracks, a federal judge ruled, upholding the constitutionality of a law that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) refused to defend.

The decades-old bans comply with the Second Amendment because it applies to sensitive places where gun carrying rights aren’t absolute, US District Judge Mark T. Pittman of the Northern District of Texas said in a Tuesday written opinion.

Governments have long restricted firearms in sensitive areas, the Trump appointee said, suggesting that Texas’ ban could be reviewed by state lawmakers.

“Indeed, lest it be forgotten, Texans can renege on the Firearms Prohibitions if they so choose through their elected representatives,” Pittman wrote in granting the state’s summary judgment motion.

The plaintiffs—Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. and three individuals—filed a notice of appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. They argued to Pittman that the Second Amendment grants them the right to carry firearms to defend themselves in public places, including bars, where they say the ban wrongly applies equally to people not consuming alcohol.

After Paxton declined to defend the ban, Pittman in May 2025 tapped former Fifth Circuit Judge Gregg Costa, now of Gibson Dunn, and Southern Methodist law professor Eric Ruben to back the law as amici curiae.

Costa and Ruben, Pittman wrote, “have demonstrated that Texas’s law is sufficiently analogous to historical laws prohibiting the carry of firearms in sensitive places to justify Texas’s Firearms Prohibitions.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Cooper & Scully PC and Benbrook Law Group PC.

The case is Ziegenfuss v. Martin, N.D. Tex., No. 4:24-cv-01049, 3/24/26.