Jay Jones tried to steal the courtroom. He lost again.

The bottom line

On July 6, 2026, a three-judge panel appointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia refused to let Attorney General Jay Jones merge four separate lawsuits against the state’s gun ban into one friendly courtroom. The judges heard the argument and killed the motion in the same morning. That single procedural ruling might matter more than any injunction we’ve won so far, because it keeps four independent shots at striking down SB 749 alive in four different courthouses instead of one.

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This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.

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What Richmond actually tried to do

Back in late May, Jay Jones and a group of allied commonwealth’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court of Virginia to invoke the Multiple Claimant Litigation Act, Va. Code § 8.01-267.4, and pull four pending challenges to SB 749 out of the county courthouses where gun owners had filed them. The four cases are Crump v. Katz (Lancaster County), Santolla v. Katz (Washington County), Curtis v. Katz (Spotsylvania County), and Black v. Hook (Fauquier County). Richmond wanted all four folded into a single proceeding, in front of a single judge, ideally in a courtroom the Commonwealth found more favorable than the four venues gun owners deliberately chose.

On June 3, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia appointed a three-judge panel to weigh that request: Circuit Judges Richard S. Wallerstein Jr., J. William Watson Jr., and Helivi L. Holland. Oral argument happened on the morning of July 6. Gun Owners of America announced the result within about an hour: “A three judge panel in Virginia just DENIED consolidation of the cases filed against anti-gun legislation.” Ammoland’s coverage of the ruling adds that the panel found the four suits involve different statutory frameworks and distinct legal questions despite sharing some factual overlap, which is exactly what gun owners’ lawyers argued against consolidating them in the first place.

One caveat worth stating plainly: the panel’s written order was not public as of this writing. What I’m working from is GOA’s announcement and the reporting that followed it. That’s still more than enough to know why this matters.

Why the Multiple Claimant Litigation Act was never built for this

The MCLA exists for mass tort litigation. Think defective car engines, contaminated products, pharmaceutical injuries. Cases where dozens or hundreds of plaintiffs suffered functionally identical harm from the same defect and it makes sense to consolidate discovery and avoid duplicative trials. It was never written with a constitutional challenge to a gun ban in mind, and it shows. Jay Jones tried to stretch a statute designed for mass torts into a tool for herding four distinct constitutional theories, in four different counties, in front of one bench of his choosing. That is not what the statute is for, and the panel apparently agreed enough to reject the motion outright.

Each of these four cases makes a different legal argument, which is exactly the point.

Crump v. Katz rests entirely on Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution, the Commonwealth’s own right-to-keep-and-bear-arms clause, which Virginia courts have treated as at least as protective as the Second Amendment. The complaint pleads no federal claim at all, which means the Fourth Circuit’s Bianchi v. Brown precedent on assault weapons bans can never reach it. That’s a deliberate legal strategy, and it’s why Crump was already the case that delivered the June 25 statewide injunction against SB 749 out of Lancaster County Circuit Judge John Martin’s courtroom.

Santolla v. Katz, filed in Washington County in the far southwest of the state, makes a similar state-constitutional argument in a completely different judicial circuit. It delivered its own preliminary injunction on June 29.

Curtis v. Katz, out of Spotsylvania, leans on the militia clause. I’ll be honest, of the four this is probably the shakiest theory. But shaky is still alive, and alive is still a shot.

Black v. Hook, filed in Fauquier County, throws in essentially every available argument. It is the kitchen-sink case, and it may end up being one of the stronger vehicles simply because it gives a friendly judge the most doors to walk through.

Four shots beat one shot every time

Do the math with me for a second, because this is the entire reason consolidation was the single biggest threat to this fight. If Richmond had won consolidation, all four cases collapse into one proceeding, in front of one judge, and both existing statewide injunctions get reheard from scratch by whoever that judge turns out to be. One loss ends the whole campaign. Jay Jones only needed to win once to erase four rulings at the same time, and he would have gotten to help pick the venue where that single fight happened.

Instead, gun owners keep four separate cases in four separate counties that were deliberately chosen because they are favorable jurisdictions. To beat SB 749 permanently, we do not need to win all four. We only need one final win to stand. Richmond, on the other hand, has to go four for four, plus fend off the federal Department of Justice suit filed July 1 under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, plus whatever the Supreme Court eventually says about AR-15s in the consolidated Viramontes and Grant cases next term. Every one of those is a separate opportunity for the ban to fall. Richmond has to survive every single one.

Venue is the whole ballgame in American litigation, whether people like admitting that or not. The same facts argued in front of a different judge, in a different circuit, produce different outcomes constantly. That is just how the system works, and Jay Jones understood it well enough to try to game it. He failed.

The streak keeps going

Look at the calendar. June 25, Crump v. Katz delivers a statewide preliminary injunction. June 29, Santolla v. Katz delivers a second one, the same day Governor Spanberger’s budget delays the separate carry ban to 2027. July 1, the Department of Justice sues Virginia. July 6, the consolidation panel refuses to hand Richmond a single friendly courtroom. That is four wins in twelve days, and I don’t think that is an accident. The lawyers on our side understood exactly which counties to file in and which legal theories to keep separate rather than merge.

I’m not going to pretend it’s anything other than good luck for our side that Jay Jones is the one running this defense. He’s been out-lawyered at basically every turn since this fight started, and the consolidation attempt was his cleanest shot at reversing that in one move. He took the swing, three judges heard it out on the morning of July 6, and they said no in about an hour. SB 749 is still frozen. Four courthouses are still in play. Richmond still has to win every single one of them to make this ban stick.