Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon has been using the Civil Rights Division to aggressively go after states and local governments that are violating our Second Amendment rights, and for the first time in history the DOJ even has a Second Amendment Section operating within the Civil Rights Division.
The section is currently headed up by Barry Arrington, a longtime litigator who worked extensively with National Association for Gun Rights before accepting a position within the government. Now the section has added another attorney with plenty of experience in the Second Amendment legal arena: Stephen Stamboulieh.
Stamboulieh has been involved in a number of legal challenges to gun control regimes. He was the lead counsel in the Gun Owners of America-supported lawsuit Antonyuk v. James, which challenged many of New York's "sensitive places" adopted after the state's "may issue" carry scheme was struck down in Bruen.
Stamboulieh also worked alongside Alan Beck in Yukutake v. Lopez, which successfully challenged two provisions of Hawaii’s firearms laws on the ground that they violated the Second Amendment. One required applicants to acquire a handgun within a very short time period after being issued a permit-to-purchase. The other mandated that once a handgun was purchased, it must be presented to local law enforcement for an in-person inspection.
Though a district judge and three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit both declared the statutes unconstitutional, the Ninth Circuit voted to rehear the case en banc, and oral arguments took place in late March of this year.
It's worth noting as well that Stamboulieh has been involved in a number of lawsuits challenging various aspects of the National Firearms Act, dating back to the Obama administration when he was the lead counsel in Hollis v. Holder, which took on the Hughes Amendment. More recently, he's served as counsel in Silencer Shop v. BATFE, which argues that since the tax on most NFA items has now been reduced to zero, Congress no longer has the authority to require mandatory registration and other restrictions under its taxing power.
In other words, Stamboulieh hasn't just been arguing that particular regulations violate the Second Amendment. He's gone after the government's supposed justification for the NFA's registration regime.
Could this signal a change in direction on the part of the DOJ when it comes to NFA cases? For the most part, the Justice Department has vociferously defended the National Firearms Act and its taxation and registration schemes, even though it has acknowledged that suppressors are "arms" that are protected by the Second Amendment. In Silencer Shop, the DOJ maintains that the NFA doesn't exist solely because of Congress's taxing power, but because it regulates "persons and things" involved in interstate commerce.
I would love to see the DOJ reverse course here, but I'm not sure that Stamboulieh's hiring is going to make much of a difference. For one thing, the Second Amendment Section hasn't been involved in the defense of the NFA. The DOJ's Civil Division (not to be confused with the Civil Rights Division) has taken the lead in defending the scheme from legal challenges, so if Stamboulieh has been assigned to the Second Amendment Section the most likely scenario is that he will no longer have anything to do with Silencer Shop. Certainly he won't be in a position to help the plaintiffs anymore, but I would be surprised if he's involved in the DOJ's defense of the NFA in any way.
So what can we expect from Stamboulieh? If Arrington's hire is any indication, the Second Amendment Section may soon take an interest in some of the issues that Stamboulieh has litigated in the past; sensitive places, permitting restrictions, and some of the bizarre rules that gun owners in deep-blue states have to navigate in order to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Shortly after Arrington was hired, the DOJ filed suit against the city of Denver over its "assault weapons" ban; an issue that Arrington has had plenty of experience with since he was previously the chief legal counsel for Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
I think that Dhillon is smart enough to not only bring on seasoned Second Amendment litigators, but to ask them what their priorities should be once they're in place. My guess is that Stamboulieh already has some targets in mind, and we won't have to wait too long to find out what they are.
