Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Justice Department Sues Blue State Over Magazine Ban

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The Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Colorado Wednesday, accusing it of violating the Second Amendment rights of its residents by banning commonly-used magazines.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation tightening the original 2013 ban on magazines holding 15 rounds or more in April 2025. In court documents filed with the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, the Justice Department said Colorado had admitted that it knew the magazines were commonly used.

“The State has already admitted that magazines like those it has banned are in common use by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes, including self-defense,” the suit says. “Therefore, the Magazine Ban—which makes it a crime to sell, transfer, or possess such a magazine—violates the Second Amendment.”

Justice Department Sues State of Colorado for Unconstitutional Weapons Ban

“Colorado’s ban on certain magazines is political virtue signaling at the expense of Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said @AAGDhillon. “Under my direction, the Division’s Second… pic.twitter.com/Nc876hLiLB

— DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) May 6, 2026

“Colorado’s ban on certain magazines is political virtue signaling at the expense of Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon said in the DOJ release. “Under my direction, the Division’s Second Amendment Section will continue to defend law-abiding Americans’ rights against unconstitutional restrictions on their right to possess arms which are owned by tens of millions of their fellow citizens.”

Josh Koskoff, an attorney who represented families of children killed in a December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, denounced the DOJ’s action in a statement sent to reporters.

“Ask the parents of the first-graders killed in Sandy Hook. Ask the families in Uvalde, Highland Park, and Buffalo. Not one of them will tell you their community needed easier access to a weapon of war,” Koskoff told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Denver figured that out 37 years ago. Now the Justice Department is suing to drag it backwards — not to defend the Second Amendment, but to do the gun industry’s bidding on federal letterhead. This lawsuit is as dangerous as it is meritless.”

“We’re elated to see that the Civil Rights Division is stepping in to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans in places where there’s been an open hostility to the exercise of enumerated constitutional rights,” Adam Kraut of the Second Amendment Foundation told the DCNF.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division sued Denver Tuesday over its ban on modern semiautomatic firearms, singling out the inclusion of the AR-15, which is used by millions of Americans for self-protection, sport shooting and other lawful activities.

In the 2008 Heller decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protected arms that were “in common use for lawful purposes.”

In a 2024 report, the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated that over 448 million detachable rifle magazines holding 30 rounds or more were in use or on the market. The same report estimated that there were an additional 60 million magazines that hold between 11 and 29 rounds.