DOJ Civil Rights Division Sues Virgin Islands

On December 16, Harmeet Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice filed the complaint in U.S. v. Government of Virgin Islands in the District Court of the Virgin Islands.  The lawsuit was filed “to restore the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens” under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, which authorizes the Attorney General to sue a governmental authority engaging in a pattern or practice that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

Under Virgin Islands (“VI”) law, possessing or carrying an unlicensed firearm is an offense subjecting an individual to a term of “imprisonment of not less than ten years,” and/or a fine “not less than $10,000 nor more than $15,000.”

But to obtain a license to possess and carry a firearm, a person must “establish[] to the satisfaction of the Commissioner [of the Police Department] that he has good reason to fear death or great injury to his person or property, or … any other proper reason for carrying a firearm, and the circumstances of the case, established by affidavit of the applicant and of at least two credible persons, demonstrate the need for such license.”

There’s no principled difference between that and the New York law that the Supreme Court in Bruen found to infringe on the Second Amendment: the applicant must prove “proper cause,” meaning “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community,” i.e., evidence “of particular threats, attacks or other extraordinary danger to personal safety.”

As the VI complaint further alleges, an applicant for a license must have “good moral character” without articulating any standard therefor, and a license may be denied to “any person who for justifiable reasons is deemed to be an improper person by the Commissioner” or if a “proper reason exists to deny such application,” without specifying any standard.  A separate license must be obtained for each specific firearm, which must be inspected annually by the police.

By contrast, the shall-issue licensing regimes approved in footnote 9 of Bruen “appear to contain only ‘narrow, objective, and definite standards’ guiding licensing officials, … rather than requiring the ‘appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion,’ … —features that typify proper-cause standards like New York’s.”

Without any legal authority, the VI Police Department requires the applicant to install a safe that is permanently bolted to the home’s wall or floor where a licensed firearm is to be stored. Each applicant must have his or her own safe even if they share a home with another applicant (as in the case of married couples).  Before a license is issued, a home inspection is required, which takes several months to a year to schedule and complete.

Again, as Bruen‘s footnote 9 states: “because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends, we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”  And of course the Virgin Islands still has a may-issue regime, news of the Bruen decision having apparently been ship-wrecked on its journey there.

But the usual suspect nanny states on the mainland did get the Bruen decision and have taken every measure to obstruct it.  The recent article by Mark W. Smith, “Licenses Delayed, Rights Denied: How Contemporary Firearm Carry Licensing Regimes Continue to Violate the Second Amendment,” Harvard JLPP (Fall 2025), summarizes the situation as follows:

jurisdictions hostile to gun rights have responded not with compliance, but with sophisticated resistance. In these states, the right recognized in Bruen exists on paper but remains largely inaccessible in practice. These states have transformed federalism’s promise of experimentation into what can only be described as laboratories in denying constitutional rights. The tools are facially neutral—processing times, training requirements, documentation standards—but their cumulative effect is anything but.  When examined systematically, these measures reveal a deliberate strategy of administrative nullification that courts have been slow to recognize and even slower to remedy.

The Virgin Islands are hardly a tropical paradise where no one really needs a gun for self-defense.  Homicide, robbery, and drug trafficking are endemic.  Data from the Virgin Islands Police Department describe “violent crime statistics exceeding national averages and creating serious concerns for the territory’s 87,146 residents. The homicide rate in the US Virgin Islands continued to surpass that of mainland United States and even major cities like Chicago, establishing the territory as one of the most dangerous areas under US jurisdiction.”

The Virgin Islands is not the only jurisdiction being targeted by the Civil Rights Division.  In September, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department “due to their pattern or practice of infringing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens seeking concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits.”