The bottom line
The ATF reversed a Biden-era policy that was forcing Michigan concealed carry permit holders to undergo duplicate background checks every time they bought a firearm. That is a real win. But in court, the DOJ used that reversal to argue that Gun Owners of America’s lawsuit should be thrown out without a ruling on the merits. No court order. No binding precedent. No legal protection that survives the next administration. The government essentially said: trust us, we fixed it, go home. And the Sixth Circuit bought it. That should trouble every gun owner in this country.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
The background on the Michigan NICS exemption
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Every time a federally licensed dealer sells a firearm, they run the buyer through NICS unless the buyer qualifies for an exemption. One of those exemptions exists for holders of state-issued carry permits, provided the state’s permitting process is certified as a valid Brady alternative. The logic is straightforward: if a state has already run a thorough background check as part of issuing a carry permit, making the buyer go through NICS again at the point of sale adds nothing. The person has already been vetted.
Michigan’s concealed pistol license had been recognized as a qualifying Brady alternative for years. Then in 2020, during the first Trump administration, the ATF reversed that recognition. The agency issued an advisory saying Michigan’s CPL no longer qualified, meaning every CPL holder in Michigan who walked into a gun store now had to submit to a fresh NICS check regardless of their carry permit. Dealers in Michigan were put in the position of potentially violating federal law if they accepted the CPL as an alternative.
Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation sued. They argued the ATF had exceeded its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act and that the reversal was unlawful. The case worked its way through the system for years.
What the Trump DOJ actually did in court
When the second Trump administration came in, it ordered a review of all state-issued carry permit programs to determine which ones qualified as valid Brady alternatives. In May 2025, following a presidential executive order, the ATF issued a new advisory rescinding the 2020 determination and restoring Michigan’s CPL as a valid NICS exemption. The agency acknowledged that “its previous, contrary determination was incorrect.”
That acknowledgment is significant. The ATF did not just change policy direction for political reasons. It said the old policy was wrong. That is a meaningful concession, and credit where it is due.
But then the DOJ’s lawyers walked into the Sixth Circuit and argued that because the policy had been reversed, Gun Owners of America’s lawsuit no longer presented a live controversy. Their position was that the case should be dismissed as moot. The court should not rule on whether the ATF exceeded its authority. The court should not issue an order protecting Michigan CPL holders. The litigation should simply end because the government says the problem is fixed.
The DOJ attorney in oral argument told the judges there was “no plausible basis in the record for thinking that the ATF is going to” reinstate the restriction. No plausible basis. Ever. At any point in the future. This is the argument a government lawyer made with a straight face while representing an agency that reversed this exact policy in 2020 and then reversed the reversal in 2025.
Why dismissing this as moot is a disaster for gun owners
The legal doctrine the DOJ was leaning on has a well-established exception called voluntary cessation. The general rule in federal courts is that a case becomes moot when the controversy it was built around no longer exists. But voluntary cessation says that if the government moots a case by voluntarily stopping the challenged conduct, the case stays live unless the government can prove it is absolutely clear the conduct will not resume. The burden is on the government, not the plaintiffs.
Gun Owners of America’s lawyer in the Sixth Circuit correctly identified this problem. A future administration sympathetic to maximizing background check requirements could look at Michigan’s CPL and reinstate the 2020 policy. That is not a paranoid hypothetical. It is exactly what happened from 2020 to 2025. A Democratic administration could direct the ATF to identify ways to expand NICS coverage, the agency could look at state carry permit exemptions, and Michigan CPL holders could be right back where they started with no court ruling protecting them.
The GOA attorney cited a Biden executive order directing the attorney general to move “as close to universal background checks as possible within existing law.” That order did not survive the change in administration. But executive orders do not repeal themselves permanently. A future president could issue the same directive. An agency interpreting that directive aggressively would look at state permit exemptions as low-hanging fruit. The ATF has already shown it will take that fruit when instructed to.
Without a ruling on the merits, there is no precedent saying the ATF’s 2020 reversal was unlawful. There is no court order protecting Michigan CPL holders. There is only the current administration’s policy, which is subject to change the moment a different person is in the White House.
The Sixth Circuit sided with the government
On October 30, 2025, the Sixth Circuit vacated the district court’s dismissal on standing grounds and remanded with instructions to dismiss for mootness. Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that the ATF’s reversal and the agency’s stated reasoning made it sufficiently unlikely the policy would snap back. The court also leaned heavily on the fact that Michigan itself would need to make changes for the controversy to fully revive, since the dispute involves the interaction between federal law and a state permitting scheme.
That second rationale deserves scrutiny. The court is essentially saying that because the controversy involves two moving parts, a future administration reinstating the 2020 advisory would not be enough on its own to bring the case back in exactly the same form. That may be technically correct as a matter of procedural law, but it does not mean Michigan CPL holders are protected. It means that if the ATF reinstitutes restrictive policy toward state carry permits, affected gun owners would have to start fresh litigation all over again from the beginning.
That is the outcome the DOJ was after. They did not want a judicial ruling that the 2020 advisory exceeded statutory authority. Such a ruling would bind the agency in future administrations and make it significantly harder to reimpose the policy. Instead, the government killed the case procedurally at the moment of its own choosing, preserving the ability to rerun the same play under the next anti-gun administration.
The pattern is the problem
I want to be fair to this administration’s overall record. The DOJ created the Second Amendment Section in the Civil Rights Division. It sued the Virgin Islands over its unconstitutional carry permit system. It filed amicus briefs defending Second Amendment rights in major circuit court cases. There is real pro-2A action happening at the federal level right now.
But this Michigan case is not an isolated incident. There is a pattern of the DOJ taking positions in litigation that prioritize administrative convenience or preserve federal authority over actually cementing constitutional protections for gun owners. In the Succow case in Connecticut, the DOJ filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the federal under-21 handgun purchase ban despite the Fifth Circuit having struck down that same law in January 2025. In the Michigan case, the DOJ used its own favorable policy reversal as a mechanism to kill litigation that would have produced binding court precedent.
These are not the moves of an administration that wants to build a durable legal wall around the Second Amendment. They are the moves of an administration that wants to score political wins on gun rights while preserving the executive branch’s maximum flexibility to change course. Those two things can coexist for four years. They cannot both be true over the long run.
What principled Second Amendment litigation actually requires
The GOA lawyers in this case understood something the DOJ’s lawyers were apparently uninterested in acknowledging. Protecting gun rights through the courts means getting rulings. Not just winning policy changes that the next administration can reverse. Actual written judicial opinions that bind agencies and lower courts and set the floor below which future policy cannot go.
Every time a pro-2A case gets dismissed on mootness because the government changed its own policy at a convenient moment, that is a lost opportunity to build precedent. The gun rights movement has spent decades building the doctrinal foundation that led to Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. That foundation was built through litigation, through losses and appeals and eventual wins, and through courts being forced to issue opinions on the merits. Mootness dismissals do not build that foundation. They leave gun owners relying on whoever happens to be in the White House at any given moment.
Gun Owners of America deserves real credit for pressing the argument in the Sixth Circuit even after the ATF reversed course. They knew what was at stake. The DOJ, which should have had the same interest in building durable legal protection for gun owners, chose instead to argue for dismissal. That choice has a cost, and Michigan CPL holders will potentially pay it the next time a different administration decides the ATF should get creative about background check requirements.
Attribution from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. Commentary, not legal advice.
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