The Justice Department sued California and Virginia last week over state gun laws it says violate the Second Amendment, the latest salvo in a litigation campaign that now spans more than a dozen lawsuits and marks the most aggressive federal effort to expand firearms rights in modern history.
The twin filings landed on the same day Virginia's new semiautomatic firearms ban took effect, a move that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon had publicly telegraphed months in advance. The California suit targets a new restriction on the sale of Glock-style semiautomatic pistols and the state's longstanding handgun roster system. Together, the cases represent a deliberate strategy: use the Civil Rights Division, the same arm of the DOJ that enforces voting rights and anti-discrimination law, to treat the right to keep and bear arms as exactly what the Supreme Court says it is.
A fundamental civil right. Not a second-class one.
Virginia's Senate Bill 749 prohibits the manufacture, sale, transfer, and purchase of certain semiautomatic firearms classified under state law as assault weapons. Governor Abigail Spanberger signed it into law despite a direct, public warning from Dhillon.
On April 10, 2026, Dhillon pledged to sue Virginia if Spanberger went ahead. She did. And the DOJ filed suit the day the ban took effect, as Breitbart reported.
Dhillon said this:
"On April 10, I promised Governor Spanberger that we would sue Virginia if she signed this unconstitutional weapons ban into law. I keep my promises. Law-abiding Americans should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction for simply exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms owned by millions of their fellow citizens."
Spanberger's office defended the law, 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.
That framing tells you a great deal about the political fault line. The governor's office cast the issue in terms of public safety. The DOJ cast it in terms of constitutional rights. Those two frames have coexisted uneasily for decades, but the current Justice Department has made clear which one it believes the Constitution demands.
The California lawsuit takes aim at a different corner of the gun-control apparatus. The state enacted a new restriction affecting the sale of Glock-style semiautomatic pistols, handguns that California says can be easily converted to fully automatic fire, as the Associated Press reported. The DOJ also challenges California's handgun roster system, a decades-old regulatory framework that dictates which pistols may legally be sold in the state.
The suit came only after California Attorney General Rob Bonta declined to negotiate with the Justice Department over the regulations. Bonta defended the challenged laws as "commonsense handgun design safety laws" intended to reduce accidental shootings and prevent illegal firearm modifications.
Governor Gavin Newsom's office argued that 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. That claim will now be tested in federal court, not on the policy merits, but on constitutional grounds.
The DOJ's decision to file after Bonta refused to come to the table is worth noting. It suggests the department tried a less confrontational path first. When that failed, it litigated. That sequence matters, because it undercuts any argument that the lawsuits are purely political theater.
California and Virginia are not isolated targets. Dhillon told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that the Civil Rights Division has now filed over a dozen lawsuits challenging firearm restrictions across the country.
"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."
The geographic spread is striking. The DOJ has challenged 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. That is not a scattershot approach. It is a deliberate effort to build a body of case law across multiple circuits.
Dhillon herself has been at the center of the administration's broader enforcement agenda. She has led DOJ efforts on voter roll integrity, including lawsuits against 29 states over dead registrants, and has overseen civil rights enforcement actions spanning election law and constitutional protections alike.
The breadth of the litigation campaign distinguishes this moment from anything in prior administrations. Dhillon drew a clear contrast with the Bush era, noting that while the Bush DOJ filed Supreme Court briefs defending individual gun rights in District of Columbia v. Heller, it never deployed the Civil Rights Division to file affirmative lawsuits against state or local gun laws.
"This is a really historic amount of activity from the Department of Justice to protect the Second Amendment. It's never been done before."
Dhillon was careful to frame the litigation as strategic rather than maximalist. She acknowledged pressure from Second Amendment advocates who want the DOJ to challenge every restriction on firearms.
"There are a lot of people out there in the Second Amendment community who would like us to challenge every restriction on guns. 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."
That distinction is important. The DOJ is not filing suits for headlines. It is picking cases designed to generate favorable rulings at the appellate level, rulings that would bind lower courts across entire circuits and, potentially, set the stage for future Supreme Court review.
The timing aligns with favorable winds from the high court. The Supreme Court recently issued its decision in Wolford v. Lopez, which reaffirmed that the Second Amendment should not be treated as a "second-class right." The AP reported that the Court also announced it will take up a major Second Amendment case considering whether bans on semiautomatic rifles are constitutional, with arguments expected in the fall.
The DOJ's broader enforcement posture, using the Civil Rights Division as the vehicle, sends a signal that goes beyond any single case. It reframes the institutional architecture of gun-rights litigation. For decades, Second Amendment challenges came almost exclusively from private plaintiffs and organizations like the NRA and state-level groups. Now the federal government itself is on offense.
That shift matters because the DOJ brings resources, standing, and institutional credibility that private litigants often lack. When the Civil Rights Division files suit, courts take notice. The same division that enforces the Voting Rights Act is now enforcing the Second Amendment with equal vigor, a development that would have been unthinkable under the Obama or Biden administrations.
The DOJ has also demonstrated a willingness to use its authority broadly across constitutional enforcement, warning all 50 states about noncitizen voting and pursuing federal charges in cases ranging from vote-buying in Los Angeles to voter registration disputes.
Neither California nor Virginia appears inclined to back down. Both states' attorneys general have vowed to defend their gun laws. The political incentives run in one direction for Democratic governors and AGs: fighting the Trump DOJ on firearms plays well with their base and positions them as defenders of public safety.
But the legal terrain has shifted. The Supreme Court's Heller decision established an individual right to bear arms. Its 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen imposed a historical-tradition test on firearms regulations. And now Wolford v. Lopez has reinforced the principle that courts may not treat the Second Amendment as lesser than other enumerated rights.
That is a lot of constitutional weight pressing down on state-level gun restrictions. California's handgun roster and Virginia's assault weapons ban will have to survive scrutiny under that framework, not under the more permissive standards that blue-state legislatures have grown accustomed to.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it plainly: "The Constitution is not a suggestion, and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right."
Several questions remain open. The specific courts where the California and Virginia lawsuits were filed have not been publicly identified in available reporting. The precise relief the DOJ is seeking, whether injunctions, declaratory judgments, or both, has not been detailed. And the outcomes of the department's earlier suits against Denver, Colorado, Los Angeles County, and other jurisdictions remain unclear.
Those outcomes will matter. If the DOJ racks up wins at the district and appellate levels, it will build momentum that makes each subsequent case easier. If it loses, the strategy could stall, though even losses can be useful if they create circuit splits that the Supreme Court feels compelled to resolve.
Dhillon described the effort as "pioneering":
"This is a pioneering effort by this Department of Justice. We view the Second Amendment as a very important, indeed fundamental civil right."
For millions of law-abiding gun owners in states like California and Virginia, that sentence has been a long time coming. They have watched their rights narrowed by legislative majorities that treat the Second Amendment as an inconvenience to be regulated into irrelevance. Now the federal government is telling those same legislatures: the Constitution applies in Sacramento and Richmond, too.
Blue-state governors spent years daring Washington to stop them. Washington just called the bet.
