One of the most popular and iconic tourist attractions in the United States is a public location that bans firearms. Public officials think this somehow makes it safer. Law-abiding citizens find themselves disarmed by the state. A new lawsuit by the Firearms Policy Coalition aims to change that.
Filed on March 20, 2026, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Goldberger v. James challenges the prohibitions on firearms in Times Square and names both the state Attorney General, along with the New York City Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, as well as Alvin Bragg, District Attorney for New York County.
Set in the context of the 2022 Bruen Supreme Court decision (which was brought by New York plaintiff, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association) the 13-page complaint alleges that “The Times Square carry ban unlawfully deprives individuals of the right to keep and bear arms in what is indisputably a public place where the need for self-defense may arise,” adding that it makes a “mockery of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen.”
The complaint also points out that the Bruen decision itself anticipated and disallowed the kind of sweeping bans that might be attempted by anti-gun states when it stated that “there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a ‘sensitive place’ simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.”
As for its application to Times Square, visited by an estimated 50 million people each year, the complaint notes, “While not designating the entire island a sensitive place, New York has done the next worst thing and declared a large portion and central thoroughfare of New York City a sensitive place based on that same rejected reasoning.”
The ban on firearms in Times Square includes a ban on carrying concealed by licensed individuals. The plaintiff in the case, Yehuda Goldberger, works as an executive assistant in New York and is required to disarm multiple times each day as he walks through Times Square.
New York had no such restrictions prior to the Bruen ruling. N.Y. Penal Law Section 265.01-e is the post-Bruen statute titled “Criminal possession of a firearm, rifle or shotgun in a sensitive location.” A violation is a Class E felony in New York with penalties up to four years in prison, fines, a criminal record, and loss of firearms rights.
Statutes allow strict exemptions for transporting a firearm through Times Square, which are limited to continuous and uninterrupted travel and apply only to residents who are carrying to or from a dwelling, someone who has a business in the zone, or while transporting a firearm through the zone in a vehicle, in which case it must be unloaded, locked, with ammunition stored separately.
