Last week, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division took the unusual step of suing California and Virginia over their gun laws, marking what officials say is an unprecedented effort to enforce Second Amendment rights.
The Justice Department is pursuing a coordinated legal strategy to expand Second Amendment protections, with Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon telling Fox News Digital the department has launched more than a dozen challenges to firearm restrictions across the country as it seeks to establish broader constitutional precedent.
“Since we started the second amendment section last year and even before that we filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging different restrictions in different jurisdictions,” Dhillon said, pointing to challenges involving Denver’s AR-15 ban, Colorado’s large-capacity magazine restrictions, concealed carry permit delays in Los Angeles County, firearm regulations in the U.S. Virgin Islands and gun restrictions in the District of Columbia.
“This is a really historic amount of activity from the Department of Justice to protect the Second Amendment,” Dhillon told Fox News Digital. “It’s never been done before.”
Previous administrations, including the Bush administration, defended individual gun rights through Supreme Court filings such as District of Columbia v. Heller, but did not use the Civil Rights Division to file affirmative lawsuits challenging state or local gun laws on Second Amendment grounds. The department’s current litigation strategy marks a departure from that approach.
Dhillon said the litigation is designed to produce lasting legal precedent rather than simply challenge every firearm restriction enacted by states.
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“There are a lot of people out there in the Second Amendment community who would like us to challenge every restriction on guns,” she said. “That’s really not our approach. We have an approach that tries to make law for the land and that’s got some appellate strategy in it.”
The latest phase of that effort came last week, when the Justice Department filed lawsuits against California and Virginia challenging newly enacted gun restrictions. The filings followed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Wolford v. Lopez, which reaffirmed that the Second Amendment should not be treated as a “second-class right.”
The Virginia lawsuit challenges Senate Bill 749, which prohibits the manufacture, sale, transfer and purchase of certain semiautomatic firearms classified under state law as assault weapons. The California lawsuit targets two separate firearm regulations: a new restriction affecting the sale of Glock-style semiautomatic pistols and the state’s longstanding handgun roster system.
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She said the Virginia lawsuit targets the state’s assault weapons ban because differing rulings among federal appeals courts make the issue likely to receive Supreme Court review.
In California, Dhillon said the Justice Department is focusing on two provisions it believes conflict with Supreme Court precedent: the state’s restrictions affecting Glock pistols and its handgun roster requirements, which she argued have prevented Californians from purchasing firearms that are otherwise widely available across the country.
The California lawsuit was filed after Attorney General Rob Bonta declined to negotiate with the Justice Department over the state’s firearm regulations. Bonta defended the challenged laws as “commonsense handgun design safety laws” intended to reduce accidental shootings and prevent illegal firearm modifications.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office also defended the regulations, arguing California’s firearm safety measures have contributed to one of the nation’s lowest gun death rates while respecting the rights of lawful gun owners.
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Virginia officials similarly defended their law, with Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office saying firearms designed to inflict mass casualties “do not belong in our communities” and that the legislation was intended to protect families, children and law enforcement from gun violence.
Dhillon said the Justice Department’s actions reflect a broader commitment within the administration to treat the Second Amendment as a core civil right.
“This is a pioneering effort by this Department of Justice,” she said. “We view the Second Amendment as a very important, indeed fundamental civil right.”
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