On Tuesday, January 6, the Justice Department’s Second Amendment Section filed a brief in a major 2A case out of California explaining in terms that even the intransigent state can understand that background checks for ammunition violate the Second Amendment.
The Justice Department’s brief, submitted by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, was filed simultaneously along with a brief from a coalition of 25 states also in support of appellees. Ms. Dhillon announced the filing in a post on X.
The briefs are in anticipation of oral arguments scheduled for the week of March 23 for the en banc rehearing of Rhode v. Bonta, a case challenging California’s ammunition background check requirement.
On July 24, 2025, a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s ammunition background check requirements violate the Second Amendment, affirming a permanent injunction against the measure, and upholding a district court ruling. Just days later, on August 7, the state petitioned for rehearing en banc, which the Ninth Circuit granted on December 1, 2025.
As it has with nearly every other brief, the Second Amendment Section-led effort begins by framing its purpose, writing “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of the right to keep and bear arms and in the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment.” This is in alignment with President Trump’s February 2025 Executive Order.
The brief goes on to call California’s background check requirements “barriers to ammunition acquisition” and “straightforwardly unconstitutional.”
“When firearms regulations are designed to thwart the right to bear arms, they are unconstitutional, no matter the size or characteristics of the burden they impose. Any clear-eyed analysis of the challenged law must conclude that California designed its novel regime to infringe the exercise of the right to bear arms,” states the brief, adding that they cannot survive under the Bruen framework.
The coalition of states filing the complimentary brief include: Ohio, Idaho, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, and the Arizona Legislature.
The states’ brief notes that each background check costs $19 and “erroneously denies the purchaser at least 11% of the time.” It also reminds the court that the state’s background check regime denies residents “access to interstate markets” due to the provision requiring face-to-face transactions with California FFLs. It also lays out the argument in the context of the Second Amendment and the clarifying precedent provided in the 2022 Bruen Supreme Court case.
