{"id":43516,"date":"2026-08-14T04:10:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=43516"},"modified":"2026-08-14T04:10:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T23:10:54","slug":"feds-settle-lawsuit-with-l-a-sheriffs-department-over-gun-permits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=43516","title":{"rendered":"Feds settle lawsuit with L.A. Sheriff&#8217;s Department over gun permits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2ca8cbc\/2147483647\/strip\/false\/crop\/3499x2662+0+0\/resize\/1500x1141!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F54%2Fb0%2F21202627417f9c694af01129d255%2F1557690-me-torch-run-06-mjc.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div data-element=\"story-body\" data-subscriber-content=\"\">\n<p>The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit over what federal prosecutors <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2025-09-30\/doj-lawsuit-los-angeles-county-concealed-carry-gun-permits\"><u>alleged last year<\/u><\/a> was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms for \u201cunreasonable\u201d lengths of time.<\/p>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Department will \u201cbring its procedures in line with the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark <i>Bruen<\/i> decision,\u201d the DOJ <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/justice-department-and-la-county-sheriffs-department-settle-lawsuit\" target=\"_blank\"><u>said in a statement<\/u><\/a> Thursday, referring to a 2022 high court decision affirming a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.<\/p>\n<p>Excessively delaying applications for concealed carry permits, the DOJ had alleged, effectively violated the applicants\u2019 constitutional rights.<\/p>\n<p>In response to its lawsuit, the DOJ\u2019s statement said, the Sheriff\u2019s Department \u201cdrastically cut those waiting times and is now in compliance with statutory deadlines.\u201d The development is \u201ca huge win for the residents of Los Angeles County and for the Second Amendment,\u201d the federal agency added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Justice Department supports our law enforcement partners.\u201d Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement. \u201cThe sheriff acknowledged the problem and devoted substantial additional resources, including new processing software and additional personnel, to cutting waiting times dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Department did not immediately provide comment on the settlement.<\/p>\n<p>In its complaint filed in federal district court in L.A. in September, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff\u2019s Department had \u201csystematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home \u2014 not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The complaint stated that between Jan. 2, 2024, and March 31, 2025, the Sheriff\u2019s Department received almost 4,000 applications for new concealed carry licenses, but issued only two. Two others were denied and the rest were either withdrawn or were still pending, according to the DOJ.<\/p>\n<p>The DOJ complaint also cited Sheriff\u2019s Department data that showed that over those 15 months, it took an average of nearly 300 days for the department to advance the more than 8,000 new permit applications and renewals it received.<\/p>\n<p>The Sheriff\u2019s Department said in September that Sheriff Robert Luna, who was also listed by name as a defendant in the original federal complaint, \u201cinherited a dysfunctional system\u201d when he took office in 2022, and that he had only 13 people to manage the avalanche of applications for concealed carry permits filed each year in L.A. County.<\/p>\n<p>The department also said in September that since December 2022, it had reduced \u201cthe backlog\u201d of applications for concealed carry licenses from about 10,000 to about 3,200, and that more than 19,000 such applications had been \u201csuccessfully approved\u201d since 2020.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Department of Justice and Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit over what federal prosecutors alleged last year was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms for \u201cunreasonable\u201d lengths of time. The Sheriff\u2019s Department will \u201cbring its procedures in line with the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/41b8468\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3499x1837+0+413\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F54%2Fb0%2F21202627417f9c694af01129d255%2F1557690-me-torch-run-06-mjc.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}