On April 10th, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon told Virginia Governor Spanberger that if she signed the state's ban on commercial purchase of AR-15-style rifles, the Justice Department would sue. Spanberger signed it anyway.
On July 1st, Dhillon sued.
"I keep my promises," Dhillon said.
The Department of Justice filed lawsuits against the Commonwealth of Virginia and Virginia State Police, challenging a ban on what the DOJ describes as "the most popular rifle in America." A parallel action targeted California's gun restrictions. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't mince words about the legal stakes.
"The Constitution is not a suggestion, and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right," Blanche said in the announcement.
That line — "second-class right" — is doing more work than it appears. For decades, Second Amendment advocates have argued that courts treat gun rights as somehow lesser than other constitutional protections. Free speech gets strict scrutiny. Religious liberty gets strict scrutiny. Gun rights got a shrug and a balancing test. The DOJ is now using the language gun owners have been using for years, and backing it with federal litigation.
Blanche went further: "This Justice Department has done more to protect the Second Amendment than any administration in our nation's history." That's a bold claim, but the receipts are starting to pile up.
Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division, framed the Virginia lawsuit in personal terms. "On April 10, I promised Governor Spanberger that we would sue Virginia if she signed this unconstitutional weapons ban into law," she said. "Law-abiding Americans should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction for simply exercising their Second Amendment right."
The federal lawsuits don't exist in a vacuum. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear cases challenging AR-15 bans in Cook County, Illinois and Connecticut. The Court also struck down Hawaii's gun restrictions on private property and sided with a Texas man challenging the federal ban on certain drug users owning firearms. The legal current is running in one direction, and it's not the direction Virginia and California were hoping for.
Virginia's ban on commercial purchase of AR-15-style rifles put the state squarely in the crosshairs. A state that was solidly red a decade ago went blue, and its new leadership immediately moved to restrict the most commonly owned rifle platform in the country. The DOJ's position is that you can't ban a category of firearm that millions of Americans legally own and call it constitutional.
California's inclusion in the lawsuit is less surprising but equally significant. The state has layered gun restriction on top of gun restriction for years, creating a regulatory maze that functionally discourages legal ownership. The DOJ is challenging that architecture directly.
As reported by 100 Percent Fed Up and Newsmax, the lawsuits were filed July 1st. The timing puts gun rights front and center heading into the holiday weekend and the 2026 midterm cycle.
The federal government telling two states that their gun laws violate the Constitution is not a press release. It's a lawsuit with discovery, depositions, and a judge. Governor Spanberger was warned on April 10th. She had almost three months to reconsider.
She didn't. Now it's a federal case.
