The Department of Justice (DOJ) is contradicting the Trump administration’s stance on a now-repealed Biden administration policy that burdened Second Amendment rights, a gun group alleged Tuesday.
In Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) ongoing case challenging the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which implemented stringent standards for federal firearms dealers that enabled licenses to be revoked over paperwork errors, the government does not intend to change its position, according to GOA’s Tuesday filing exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
A current DOJ lawyer informed GOA the government has “no plans to abandon its previous arguments” in recent communications about the case, per the filing.
The Biden DOJ previously argued that the Second Amendment does not protect private businesses’ right to sell firearms, according to court filings.
Though the DOJ and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) repealed the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in April, GOA is continuing to litigate the case to set a permanent precedent.
“The case is not moot, because an ATF policy like ‘zero tolerance’ is not a law, and does not go through formal processes like notice and comment rulemaking,” Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told the DCNF. “Rather, it can be done and undone at a moment’s notice, scrawled on the back of a napkin, purely at the pleasure of ATF bureaucrats. Courts repeatedly hold that challenges to such inherently transitory agency actions are not mooted simply because the agency backs off in an effort to avoid an adverse precedent in court.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the “zero tolerance” policy “unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners and created an undue burden on Americans seeking to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms” in an April statement.
“Under the previous policy, some licensees were being penalized for simple mistakes such as, forgetting to put their license number on forms,” ATF Acting Director Daniel Driscoll said when issuing an updated policy in May. “This new guidance gives our investigators the discretion to tell the difference between an honest mistake and a real threat to public safety.”
The DOJ’s litigation position is “fundamentally at odds with this Administration’s recent public statements” about the policy, GOA argued in its brief.
The DOJ declined the DCNF’s request for comment.
BREAKING
Without a permanent fix in court, the next President could EASILY re-instate this gun control. DOJ is “evading review” & we will continue to fight! pic.twitter.com/zpDuRhRGej
— Gun Owners Foundation (@GunFoundation) July 28, 2025
BREAKINGGOA filed a lawsuit in July 2023 challenging the “zero tolerance” policy, which it alleged had been “wielded as a political weapon.” The Biden administration previously argued its policy does not burden “any conduct that is encompassed by the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
“The Second Amendment does not protect a right to purchase firearms from a preferred local retailer indefinitely with minimal inconvenience,” a Biden DOJ brief from March 2024 states.
A district court dismissed the case in October 2024.
“Members of the Trump Administration – including Defendants – have publicly repudiated ‘zero tolerance’ as the blatant statutory rewrite and attack on the Second Amendment that it is,” GOA argues in its brief. “Thus, to rule in Defendants’ favor, this Court would have to overcome Defendants’ own agreement with Plaintiffs’ arguments, ignoring the chorus of support Plaintiffs’ position enjoys from numerous websites ending in ‘dot gov.’”
Two attorneys who worked on the case during the Biden administration are still listed as handling the case, according to the public docket.
“These business closures obviously disrupted the right of those entities to engage in firearm-related commerce and necessarily limited their customers’ access to arms – the very subject matter of the Second Amendment,” GOA wrote. “But rather than allow Plaintiffs the opportunity to prove these facts – showing real closures and real effects on the marketplace – the district court simply dismissed their claim.”
Pratt told the DCNF this is “just the latest in a string of legal battles that President Trump’s Department of Justice has continued to wage with Gun Owners of America.”
“We’re grateful for the plethora of pro-2A actions this administration has already taken, which makes it all the more frustrating that DOJ is fighting against lasting victories against Biden’s anti-Second Amendment actions like ATF’s Zero Tolerance Policy, the Engaged in the Business Rule, and the revocation of Michigan’s permits as Brady Alternates,” he said. “Rather than agree to a permanent and enforceable victory to make sure these abuses never happen again, DOJ has been seeking to preserve maximum government power – the opposite of what President Trump was elected to do.”
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