In Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, No. 24-1881 (6th Cir. Oct. 30, 2025), the Sixth Circuit holds that the possibility that a new U.S. Administration in 2029 might not be a sympathetic to gun rights as the current one did not warrant an exception to mootness in a challenge to “a public-safety advisory that instructed gun sellers to reject a Michigan firearms license as a satisfactory alternative to a federally required background check.”
“The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requires gun buyers to pass a background check before purchasing a weapon. See Pub. L. No. 103-159, 107 Stat. 1536. To ensure that felons and others barred by law from owning guns do not acquire them, the Act created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) as a database for gun merchants to check before selling a firearm to a customer. 34 U.S.C. § 40901(b). The system flags whether a gun purchase would violate state or federal law. See id. If it would violate either set of laws, the seller may not complete the sale.”
The law makes an exception for buyers who hold approved state firearm permits. “The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—better known as the ATF—informs federally licensed gun sellers whether state permits satisfy this exception.”
“ . . . ATF officials grew concerned that Michigan inadequately investigated red flags raised in the federal background-check database before it issued permits. When the database suggested that a potential obstacle to a customer’s purchase of a gun might exist, the Michigan State Police concluded that it need not research whether that circumstance did in fact legally bar the customer from buying a gun. After efforts to resolve the ATF’s concerns with Michigan law enforcement fell short, the Bureau sent a public-safety advisory to gun sellers in 2020 explaining that Michigan concealed-pistol licenses would no longer allow purchasers to avoid a separate federal background check.”
Plaintiffs Donald Roberts and Gun Owners of America ATF to enjoin the advisory against Michigan. The district court initially granted summary judgment to the ATF, but the Sixth Circuit vacated and remanded in an unpublished order. On remand, the district court dismissed the litigation on standing grounds.
During the pendency of the appeal, “President Donald Trump entered office for a second term . . . . On May 23, 2025, it circulated a new advisory to gun sellers about which state firearm licenses qualified as NICS background-check alternatives . . . . [ATF identified] Michigan licenses as an acceptable Brady Act alternative.”
The Sixth Circuit dismisses the appeal on mootness grounds.
“What was once a controversy no longer is. Roberts complains that the 2020 ATF public-safety advisory caused a gun shop to reject his Michigan concealed-pistol license when he tried to buy a gun. The ATF, however, has withdrawn the 2020 advisory. And the agency has disavowed any attempt to enforce it.”
“Neither the superseded 2020 advisory nor the outcome of this lawsuit has the potential to affect Roberts. He sought only forward-looking relief—a declaratory judgment and injunction— not money damages to compensate him for past injuries . . . . Because both the 2020 advisory and the policy it implemented are no longer live, his lawsuit is not either.”
The panel declines to apply the mootness exceptions of voluntary cessation and capable of repetition yet evading review.
The plaintiffs argued, among other things, that “a future administration could change course,” but the panel finds this unpersuasive.
“The mootness inquiry does not require us to layer hypotheticals on top of possibilities on top of what-ifs. It is always the case that a future administration could move in a different direction. Not only is that always a risk, but it also overlooks the reality in this case that any new position would be unlikely to look just like the old position. Avoiding mootness today to resolve a later dispute that might not even manifest in the same way—indeed is unlikely to manifest in the same way given the many moving parts in these federal and state laws—does not honor our mandate to vigorously monitor the case-and-controversy imperative.”
The panel cites cases from D.C., Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits rejecting “similar change-in-administration arguments.”
“Because the case is moot, we must vacate the district court’s order dismissing Roberts’ complaint for lack of standing. Later events prevented Roberts from receiving full consideration of his arguments on standing—an issue on which we offer no opinion—requiring us to follow our customary practice of vacating the trial court’s order . . . . We therefore vacate the district court’s order dismissing Roberts’ complaint for lack of standing and remand with instructions to dismiss the case as moot.”
Paul Mollica's Federal Courts Blog 