The Supreme Court handed down Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. ___ (2026), on February 20, 2026 — and while the headlines have focused on tariffs and IEEPA, the most important thing that opinion says for gun owners has nothing to do with trade policy. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 6–3 majority, drew a constitutional bright line between the power to tax and the power to regulate. That distinction is going to be a sledgehammer in every pending NFA lawsuit.
The Setup: One Big Beautiful Bill Left a Regulatory Ghost
When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1, 119th Congress), signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, it zeroed the $200 NFA transfer and making tax for suppressors, short-barrel rifles (SBRs), and short-barrel shotguns (SBSs) effective January 1, 2026. The tax is gone. Done.
But the Trump DOJ is currently arguing in the district courts — in cases like Brown v. ATF (E.D. Mo.), Jensen v. ATF (N.D. Tex.), and Roberts v. ATF (E.D. Ky.) — that even without the tax, the NFA’s registration requirements, fingerprinting mandates, and background-check infrastructure remain fully in force. My view is that argument is wrong, and the Supreme Court just made it a lot harder to sustain.
The NFA has always been a taxing statute. The 1937 decision in Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506 (1937), upheld the entire National Firearms Act on the ground that it is a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I, Section 8 taxing power — not the commerce power, not some general police power. The Act’s registration and fingerprinting requirements exist to ensure that the tax gets paid. They are ancillary to the tax. There is no freestanding regulatory hook in the NFA.
What the Court Actually Said — and Why It Matters for the NFA
Chief Justice Roberts went out of his way in Learning Resources to reaffirm Sonzinsky. The majority quoted Alexander Hamilton from Federalist No. 30 on the centrality of the taxing power, then pivoted to the NFA directly:
“The power to impose tariffs is very clearly a branch of the taxing power. A tariff, after all, is a tax levied on imported goods and services… . Taxes, to be sure, may accomplish regulatory ends — [citing Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506].”
That parenthetical cite to Sonzinsky is not incidental. The Court was expressly reaffirming that the NFA is a tax regime.
But then the majority went further, and this is where the decision becomes a weapon for us:
“The word ‘regulate,’ as that term is ordinarily used, means to fix, establish or control… . [T]he facial breadth of ‘to regulate’ places in stark relief what the term is not usually thought to include: taxation. The U.S. Code is replete with statutes granting the executive the authority to regulate someone or something. Yet the government cannot identify any statute in which the power to regulate includes the power to tax.”
And then this closing passage:
“This is unsurprising, as the power to regulate commerce is entirely distinct from the right to levy taxes.”
The Court is unequivocal: taxes and regulations are different in kind, not degree. You cannot smuggle one into the other.
The Constitutional Gap the DOJ Cannot Bridge
Here is the problem the Trump DOJ faces in Brown, Jensen, and Roberts. The entire statutory architecture of the NFA — the registration requirement, the $200 tax, the fingerprinting, the background checks — was upheld in Sonzinsky as a unified taxing scheme. Now that Congress has removed the tax for suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs, there is no Article I anchor left for those remaining regulations. The Learning Resources majority has just reaffirmed, in unambiguous terms, that the power to regulate is entirely distinct from the power to tax. You cannot point to a dead tax as a hook for a living regulation.
The DOJ’s current position amounts to this: “Congress still has the power to regulate these items even though the regulatory apparatus exists solely to enforce a tax that no longer applies.” The Supreme Court just said that is not how constitutional authority works. Taxation and regulation are separate powers. Once you eliminate the tax, you cannot borrow the tax power’s legitimacy for the regulatory tail it used to wag.
The Commerce Clause is no escape hatch either. The NFA does not invoke the Commerce Clause. Courts decide cases on the statutes as written, not on hypothetical authority Congress might theoretically invoke in some future rewrite.
Peterson Waiting in the Wings
There is also a live cert petition sitting at the Court right now. Peterson v. United States, No. 25-1076, involves a suppressor conviction under the NFA — and the Fifth Circuit affirmed that conviction on February 6, 2025. The Second Amendment Foundation, NRA, and American Suppressor Association are all urging the Court to grant cert. The Learning Resources ruling, with its explicit reaffirmation of Sonzinsky and its clear tax-versus-regulation dichotomy, strengthens the argument that Peterson is worth taking.
Where This Leaves the NFA Fight
The lawsuits in Missouri, Texas, and Kentucky are the near-term battlefield. Learning Resources does not decide them — but it arms the challengers with a six-justice opinion, authored by the Chief Justice himself, that says precisely what they need it to say. The power to tax and the power to regulate are separate animals. The NFA’s regulations were anchored to a tax. That tax is gone for suppressors, SBRs, and SBSs. The anchor is up.
The history of the future is yet to be written, as I like to say. But the Supreme Court just handed the Second Amendment community a very significant doctrinal tool, and I expect the litigants in Brown, Jensen, and Roberts to use it.
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.