Virginia passed a law ordering the State Police to enforce a statute that a Lynchburg circuit court permanently enjoined as unconstitutional, and the State…
The bottom line
Virginia passed a law ordering the State Police to enforce a statute that a Lynchburg circuit court permanently enjoined as unconstitutional, and the State Police are now doing exactly that. Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, and the Virginia Citizens Defense League filed a rule-to-show-cause motion on May 28, asking the court to hold State Police Superintendent Col. Jeffrey S. Katz in contempt. A court said no. A legislature said do it anyway. The police complied. Everyone involved knows this is a problem.
This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
How we got here
In October 2025, Judge F. Patrick Yeatts of the Twenty-Fourth Judicial Circuit of Virginia (Lynchburg) issued a permanent injunction striking down Virginia Code § 18.2-308.2:5, the statute requiring background checks on private firearm transfers. The case was Wilson et al. v. Colonel Matthew D. Hanley, brought by Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, and the Virginia Citizens Defense League.
The court’s reasoning came down to a specific constitutional problem. Federal dealers can’t sell handguns to anyone under 21. Under § 18.2-308.2:5, private sellers faced the same background check requirement. That left 18-to-20-year-old Virginians with no lawful way to acquire a handgun at all. Judge Yeatts concluded the court had one option: strike the statute entirely and permanently enjoin its enforcement statewide.
Permanent injunction. Not a temporary restraining order, not preliminary relief pending appeal. The Commonwealth was ordered to stop enforcing that law.
What the legislature did in response
The Virginia General Assembly’s answer was HB 1525, which directly orders the Virginia State Police to enforce the same statute the court just blocked. Governor Abigail Spanberger pushed it through, added an emergency clause, and signed it April 22, 2026.
The bill also raises the minimum handgun purchase age to 21, matching federal standards. That’s the fig leaf Spanberger and AG Jay Jones are hiding behind. Jones filed a motion in the Lynchburg court arguing HB 1525 creates a new, different statute that renders the old injunction moot. The old case was about old law, he says. New law supersedes. Injunction void.
That argument is weak and I think they know it. The injunction is against enforcing a background-check requirement for private sales. HB 1525 creates a background-check requirement for private sales. Putting a new bill number on it does not cure the constitutional defects Judge Yeatts already identified.
The emergency clause problem
HB 1525 includes an emergency clause making it effective immediately on signing rather than on the standard July 1 effective date. Virginia’s constitution requires emergency legislation to pass by 80 percent of both chambers. HB 1525 cleared the Senate 21-18 and the House 63-36. Neither margin is close to 80 percent.
The emergency clause is constitutionally invalid. Without it, HB 1525 doesn’t take effect until July 1, 2026. When the State Police announced they were resuming background checks, there was nothing legally in effect that displaced the October 2025 injunction. The injunction was still binding. The State Police announced they’d resume enforcement anyway.
Delegate Doug Jones laid this out on the House floor while HB 1525 was being debated. He read Judge Yeatts’ language directly into the record, warned that the bill would be challenged and would fail, and said Virginia taxpayers would spend millions defending something that was already adjudicated as indefensible. He called it an “I told you so” in real time. He was right.
What the contempt motion actually does
GOA, the Gun Owners Foundation, and VCDL filed their rule-to-show-cause motion on May 28 in the Lynchburg circuit court, naming Superintendent Katz in his official capacity. The State Police now have to explain to Judge Yeatts why they should not be held in contempt for enforcing a statute the court permanently enjoined.
Katz is probably not going to jail. The realistic outcome is a court order directing the State Police to cease enforcement, possibly with financial penalties attached, and a written record that the Spanberger administration ordered a state agency to violate a court order. That written record matters. It goes into the factual history of this case and of Virginia’s 2A litigation more broadly.
The Fifth Circuit has already ruled favorably on the Second Amendment issues at stake for 18-to-20-year-old gun buyers under Bruen. The Supreme Court has been considering a petition from a related case. A contempt ruling out of Lynchburg doesn’t bind federal courts, but it does document that state actors in Virginia are treating the Second Amendment as something to work around rather than comply with. That kind of record accumulates.
This was a deliberate choice
This isn’t bureaucratic confusion. The Virginia Mercury reported that Spanberger’s office explicitly confirmed background checks were resuming despite the court order. Jones filed motions in Lynchburg arguing the injunction is moot. The State Police made a public announcement. Everyone knew the injunction existed and everyone moved forward anyway.
What Spanberger and Jones wanted was the announcement. Background checks back in effect before July 1, before anyone could make the story about the unconstitutional emergency clause. They got the headline. The legal reality was an inconvenience they chose to deal with later.
And they ran the State Police through it to get there, which is why Katz is named in the contempt motion rather than Jones or Spanberger. The administration made a decision. The people who carry a badge absorbed the legal exposure.
Where Bruen leaves this
Bruen requires the government to justify firearms regulations against the historical tradition of regulation at the time of the founding. Universal background checks for private sales have no founding-era analogue. The concept that a free citizen needed government approval before handing a firearm to another free citizen is a 20th-century invention. Courts that apply Bruen faithfully have been striking these laws down. The Lynchburg ruling is exactly that.
Heller confirmed the Second Amendment protects an individual right. McDonald incorporated it against the states. Virginia is not operating in some zone where these precedents don’t reach.
Jones’ age-alignment argument also doesn’t actually address the injunction’s scope. Matching the Virginia handgun purchase age to the federal standard of 21 doesn’t cure the background-check process problem. The injunction covered § 18.2-308.2:5 in full, not just the age interaction piece. Even if HB 1525 fixes the age gap, the private-sale check requirement is still constitutionally suspect under Bruen and was the core of what Judge Yeatts struck down.
GOA and VCDL won the underlying case. They’re now in a position where the state is in apparent violation of the court’s order, every day the State Police runs these checks strengthens the contempt argument, and the clock is ticking toward July 1 when HB 1525 actually takes effect and the whole fight restarts on the merits.
Spanberger is betting that procedural noise, the mootness argument, the new bill number, the AG’s filings, will buy enough time that the contempt motion becomes academic. That might work on the calendar. It doesn’t change what happened. Virginia told its law enforcement to violate a court order. Someone in that chain should have to stand up and explain why.
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