A complaint asks. A motion under Rule 65 is how you actually make a court stop a law while the case is pending. The Justice Department wrote the first one and never filed the second.
Everything below is a real entry, in order, with the court's own wording. The right-hand lane stays empty for the entire length of the page. That empty column is the story.
Counsel reminded to file proposed summons for second defendant as soon as possible.Dkt. 4 · U.S. Proposed summons to the Virginia State Police Filed later the same day, after the reminder.
Intradistrict Transfer to Alexandria Division case number 1:26-cv-2035.The Richmond docket is terminated the same day. Eight days after the press release, the case has a new number, a new courthouse, and a new judge.
Filing a complaint starts a case that will take years. If you want a statute to stop operating this month, you file a motion under Rule 65, put on a record, and ask for a ruling. Every lawyer in this fight knows that, because every other plaintiff did it.
This is the entire order. One page, signed a week after filing, on the court's own initiative. Nobody moved for it. Nobody argued it.
This matter is before the Court on its own initiative. It has come to the attention of the Court that the above-styled matter is related to another case currently pending before The Honorable United States District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Alexandria Division of the Eastern District of Virginia. Accordingly, the Court hereby ORDERS that the Clerk TRANSFER this case to the Alexandria Division and REASSIGN the matter to Judge Brinkema.
/s/ Roderick C. Young, United States District JudgeThe related case is almost certainly McDonald v. Katz, No. 1:26-cv-01305, the NRA/FPC/SAF challenge to the same Virginia statutes, filed in Alexandria on May 14. The order does not name it. Sixteen days after this transfer landed the case on her desk, Judge Brinkema stayed McDonald by consent and asked the United States whether this case should be stayed as well.
ORDERED that plaintiff advise the Court within seven (7) days of the date of this Order as to whether this civil action should be stayed as well pending the Supreme Court's resolution of Viramontes and Grant.
Docket text, Alexandria Division, No. 1:26-cv-02035. The order does not print a calendar date; seven days from July 24 is Friday, July 31, 2026.As well. Two words carrying the whole context. On June 30 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Viramontes v. Cook County (No. 25-238) and Grant v. Higgins (No. 25-566) — the AR-15 common-use question. Judge Brinkema has already put one case against Virginia's ban on ice until those mandates issue. She is asking the Justice Department whether it would like the same treatment.
No discovery, no briefing, no ruling on whether Virginia's ban violates the Second Amendment. In McDonald, the trigger is the mandates in both Viramontes and Grant, plus thirty days for a joint status report. Argument has not even been scheduled. Realistically that is 2027.
Four weeks of appearances and summonses is a hard record to argue from. There is no motion pending, no hearing requested, no answer due until late September, and the government's own prayer for relief asked for a preliminary injunction it never moved for.
The Virginia Department of State Police is the defendant whose officers actually enforce the ban. It is the reason the § 12601 theory works at all. Here is how long it took to hand them the paper.
Nothing here is fatal. Service gets fixed, waivers are normal, September answer dates are ordinary civil practice. That is exactly the point. This is a docket being run at the speed of ordinary civil practice, in a case the Department announced as a constitutional emergency.
I want to be fair to the lawyers here, because there is a real argument that the empty lane is strategy rather than sloth.
Paragraph 8 of the complaint concedes that Bianchi v. Brown binds the district court. A district judge in the Fourth Circuit cannot grant this injunction. A motion would have been denied, and a denial makes a headline that reads court refuses to block Virginia gun ban. Then on June 30 the Supreme Court took the AR-15 question itself. Why spend a loss on a preliminary ruling when the answer is coming from the only court that can give it?
The Department asked for a preliminary injunction in its own prayer for relief. A denial below is not a defeat; it is the appealable order that gets you upstairs, which is precisely what the state plaintiffs used. Two state trial judges found a way to freeze the ban while the federal government filed notices of appearance. And a case that was never meant to move is a press release with a docket number.
If you have been telling yourself that the Justice Department is going to save Virginia gun owners, the docket says otherwise. The reason you can still walk into a Virginia gun shop has nothing to do with Washington.
Santolla v. Katz, CL26-1139. Judge Jeffrey L. Campbell enjoined SB 749 and HB 217 on June 29, 2026, then extended the injunction to every law enforcement officer and every Commonwealth's Attorney in the state, with onset July 21. No federal court has enjoined anything. The carry ban is separately on hold only because of a budget amendment that runs out July 1, 2027.
within seven (7) days. It does not print a date. Seven days from July 24, 2026 is Friday, July 31, 2026.