The Trump administration just won a significant legal battle — and this one hits the gun-control lobby where it hurts most: the money. On July 7, 2025, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee sitting in Washington, D.C., dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force the Department of Justice to restore more than $820 million in terminated grants. The case is Vera Institute of Justice v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-01643 (D.D.C. July 7, 2025), and it is as big a win for Second Amendment supporters as anything you’ll see come out of the D.C. federal courthouse.
What Was at Stake
In April 2025, DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs terminated more than 370 multi-year cooperative agreements and grants totaling over $820 million. At least $150 million of that money flowed directly from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) — the 2022 gun legislation co-authored by Senator John Cornyn of Texas and signed by Joe Biden. In identical termination notices, the agency told grantees the awards “no longer effectuated the program’s goals or agency priorities,” told them to stop work immediately, and informed them they would be reimbursed only through the termination date.
The Vera Institute and several co-plaintiffs filed a class action on behalf of hundreds of affected organizations. They argued the Trump DOJ terminated the grants unlawfully and asked the court to block the cancellations and order the money restored.
Why This Money Matters for the Second Amendment
Here is the number I want you to sit with: $820 million. Add up the entire budgets of the Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the National Rifle Association, and every other pro-rights organization in the country. I do not believe you reach $820 million. And yet, under Biden, the DOJ was routing that level of federal funding to organizations tasked with “violence prevention” — programs I have very little doubt were oriented toward weakening gun rights, not protecting them. The BSCA, whatever its stated purpose, was always a vehicle to get public dollars into the gun-control movement’s preferred nonprofit networks.
Defunding that pipeline is not a side issue — it is one of the most consequential moves the Trump DOJ can make for gun rights.
What Judge Mehta Said — and What He Didn’t Do
This ruling is worth reading carefully, because Judge Mehta did not exactly cheer for the Trump administration. He called the mass terminations “shameful.” He wrote that the cancellations were “likely to harm communities and individuals vulnerable to crime and violence.” He said “no federal agency, especially the Department of Justice, should conduct itself in this manner.”
Those are strong words — and, frankly, I think it is inappropriate for a federal judge to editorialize like that in a legal opinion. But here is the key: all of that personal displeasure did not change the legal outcome. Judge Mehta acknowledged plainly that the court’s powers are limited, writing:
“Displeasure and sympathy are not enough in a court of law. The court’s powers are limited. It cannot act without jurisdiction or in the absence of a valid cause of action. That is the nub here. The court cannot grant plaintiffs relief because it lacks the power to hear their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, and because plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a violation of any constitutional right or protection.”
The motion for a preliminary injunction was denied. The government’s motion to dismiss was granted. The class certification motion was denied as moot. Case closed.
The APA Barrier and What It Means Going Forward
The Administrative Procedure Act is the standard tool plaintiffs use to challenge executive agency action in federal court. Judge Mehta’s ruling that the APA provides no valid cause of action here is significant: even when a court believes the government acted badly, courts cannot override executive funding decisions when Congress has not supplied a clear right of action. The executive controls the purse strings on discretionary grants, and courts following the law have to respect that.
Judicial restraint cuts both ways. Executive agencies that overreach on gun regulations should face the same jurisdictional wall that stopped the Vera plaintiffs here — and when it works in our favor, it is worth recognizing.
Judge Mehta’s conclusion underscored the point:
“There is no doubt in the court’s mind that the Office of Justice Programs award terminations were unfair and indiscriminate… The court laments that the limits of its own power prevent it from helping plaintiffs and similarly situated grantees, but the court cannot cure an injustice by exceeding its own authority.”
He laments. He still rules correctly. I will take that.
The Trend Is the Friend
Is this a direct Second Amendment case? No. But the BSCA was gun-control legislation, and the money flowing from it was going to organizations I have every reason to believe were working against the right to keep and bear arms. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Trump DOJ pulled the plug on that pipeline, and an Obama-appointed judge with a long track record of ruling against the Trump administration could not find a legal hook to turn it back on.
That is a win. And it is part of a broader trend of the Trump administration systematically dismantling the infrastructure of the gun-control movement — not by passing new laws, but by stopping the federal government from bankrolling the opposition. Every battle counts, and this one counts a lot.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.