DOJ Gives Minnesota Until Sept. 23 to Negotiate or Face a Federal Suit Over 30-Day Handgun Purchase Waits That Stretch to Nearly 60

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ST. PAUL, MN — Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon has notified Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her that she has authorized a federal lawsuit over Minnesota’s waiting periods for buying handguns and certain rifles. The letter, dated September 17 and sent by email and certified mail, carries the caption “Notice of Suit: United States v. State of Minnesota, City of Minneapolis, and City of St. Paul.” It gives the state until 5:00 p.m. ET on September 23 to say whether it wants to talk. After that, the letter says, “the United States may file its complaint without further notice.”

Dhillon posted the full letter on X. It runs three pages and reads like a complaint in outline form, with the statutes, the case law, and the settlement terms already laid out.

Here is the system the Justice Department is targeting. A Minnesotan who holds a carry permit under Minn. Stat. § 624.714 can buy a handgun without the extra wait. My Minnesota concealed carry page covers how that permit works. The letter notes that the vast majority of Minnesotans do not have one, and for them the state offers two paths. Under Minn. Stat. § 624.7132 Subd. 4, a buyer can file a Transferee Report with the local chief of police or sheriff and then wait 30 days before the purchase is allowed. Or, under Minn. Stat. § 624.7131, a buyer can apply to the chief of police for a Permit to Purchase, and the law gives the Minneapolis and St. Paul chiefs up to 30 days to grant it. That permit is good for one year under Subd. 6, which the letter says “amounts to an additional thirty-day waiting period each year for Minnesota citizens who merely wish to defend their home.”

“Regardless of whether a Minnesota citizen uses the Permit to Purchase process or the Transferee Report process, he or she is required to wait up to thirty days to be allowed to purchase a firearm,” Dhillon wrote. “That is assuming the chiefs of police act within the statutory deadline.” According to the letter, approvals in St. Paul and Minneapolis “commonly exceed the statutory limit of 30 days,” and “some citizens have been forced to wait nearly 60 days.” The wait applies even to buyers who have already cleared a NICS background check. A person who has proven he is not prohibited still cannot take his firearm home until the state’s clock runs out.

A month, sometimes two, sits between the day a Minnesotan decides he needs a handgun and the day the state lets him have it. The letter makes the point that this applies “even if a person desires to use a firearm solely for defense of his or her home.” For someone with a real threat outside the front door, that is not paperwork. Part of a serious defensive mindset is understanding that the right to keep a firearm means very little if the state can park you in a queue for sixty days after you have already passed the background check.

The legal argument leans on three cases. The letter cites Bruen for the proposition that the Supreme Court upheld shall-issue permit schemes but “immediately cautioned against abusive ‘regimes where… lengthy wait times in processing license applications… deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.’” It cites Ortega v. Grisham, a 2025 Tenth Circuit decision that invalidated a seven-day waiting period for firearm purchases, for the line that “[a]cquiring, purchasing, and possessing firearms is a necessary predicate to keeping and bearing them.” If a seven-day wait fell in the Tenth Circuit, a 30-day wait that routinely runs to 60 is a large target.

The complaint, as described, will make two claims. First, that the Report of Transfer and Transferee Permit schemes violate Minnesota residents’ Second Amendment rights “by imposing unnecessary and prejudicial delays that deny ordinary citizens their right to acquire lawful arms.” Second, that the St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Departments’ implementation of those policies “constitutes a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct that deprives persons of their constitutional rights.” The letter says the United States is authorized to bring that action under 34 U.S.C. § 12601. In plain terms, the department is treating the way these two police departments process gun purchase applications as systemic misconduct, not as a collection of individual slow approvals. Naming the two cities and their police departments as defendants, not just the state, aims the case at the desks where the delays actually happen.

Dhillon wrote that the department “will consider deferring the filing of the lawsuit for a short period” if the state enters pre-suit negotiations. The terms are not soft. Any resolution must, “at a minimum,” require Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul to “(1) immediately cease enforcement of the statutes identified above; (2) acknowledge the unconstitutionality of these statutes; and (3) agree to enter into a court-enforceable consent decree permanently enjoin the violation of citizens’ constitutional rights through these or any similar laws.” A consent decree is a settlement a federal judge signs and can enforce, so the state would be agreeing to a court order that outlasts the current administration in St. Paul. The “any similar laws” language is meant to close the door on rewriting the same wait under a new name.

The letter also serves as a document-retention notice, directing state officials, employees, and contractors to preserve emails, files, and other records relevant to the matter. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis City Attorney Kristyn Anderson, and St. Paul City Attorney Irene Kao were copied. The state is told to contact Barry Arrington, Chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section, if it wants to negotiate.

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No complaint has been filed yet, no judge has weighed in, and the letter gives Minnesota six days to choose between the negotiating table and the courtroom. The state and the two cities will have their say.

I will continue tracking the Justice Department’s action against Minnesota’s permit-to-purchase and transferee report statutes and will report when the deadline passes, a complaint is filed, or the state responds.