A Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas refused to lift an injunction against the Biden administration's sweeping ATF firearms dealer rule, telling the Department of Justice it cannot dodge prior court orders by "rearranging a few words."

U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas ruled Thursday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Engaged in the Business" rule remains blocked, and that the DOJ's attempt to revive it through a lightly revised version fails as a legal matter. The ruling extends a legal defeat that began more than two years ago and now looks increasingly permanent.

The decision lands another blow against one of the Biden administration's signature gun-control initiatives, a rule that critics said would have effectively imposed universal background checks on private firearms sales without congressional authorization. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Kacsmaryk calls DOJ's revised rule "too clever by half"

In his written ruling, Judge Kacsmaryk left little room for ambiguity about how he viewed the government's legal strategy:

"The Court's 2024 and 2026 Orders were clear: ATF violated the [Administrative Procedures Act] when it promulgated the Engaged in the Business Rule, so the rule cannot stand."

He went further, directly addressing the DOJ's argument that a newly proposed version of the rule, put forward by ATF in April, should warrant lifting the injunction. The judge characterized the agency as being "too clever by half," finding that the revised rule doubled down on the substance of the original rather than correcting its legal deficiencies.

Kacsmaryk wrote that the government "cannot avoid the force of those Orders by rearranging a few words between the old Rule and the new one." That language signals the court views the ATF's revised proposal not as a genuine fix, but as an end-run around two separate judicial orders, one issued in 2024, another in 2026, that found the agency violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the federal law governing how agencies write and implement regulations.

The ruling is consistent with the broader pattern of federal courts scrutinizing executive-branch agencies that attempt to achieve through regulation what Congress has declined to pass through legislation. In a similar vein, recent legal battles between administrations and the judiciary have underscored how often courts serve as the last check on regulatory overreach.

ATF's original rule tried to redefine who counts as a gun dealer

The regulation at the center of the fight, formally titled the "Definition of 'Engaged in the Business' as a Dealer in Firearms", was finalized by ATF in April 2024. It adjusted key regulatory definitions, including what it means to be "engaged in the business as a dealer other than a gunsmith or pawnbroker" and what constitutes a "principal objective of livelihood and profit" from firearm sales.

In practical terms, the rule aimed to expand the number of people required to obtain a Federal Firearms License. Under the Biden-era framework, even a person who sold firearms without turning a profit could still fall under ATF's enforcement umbrella. The agency defined how a person was "engaging in the business" or showing intent to "predominantly earn a profit", and specified that failing to make money would not shield a seller from being treated as an unlicensed dealer.

Judge Kacsmaryk characterized the rule as a mechanism for imposing so-called "universal background checks", a policy goal that gun-control advocates have long sought but that Congress has never enacted into law. That framing matters. If the executive branch can accomplish through regulation what the legislature has repeatedly declined to do, the separation of powers becomes an afterthought.

The willingness of judges to embed sharp policy critiques in their rulings has become a recurring feature of the current legal landscape, and Kacsmaryk's opinion fits squarely in that tradition.

A June 2024 injunction started the clock on this fight

The rule barely survived its own rollout. A federal judge blocked it in June 2024, just weeks after it was finalized. When the Washington Examiner reported on the initial temporary restraining order, the injunction came down just one day before the rule was set to take effect nationally. Judge Kacsmaryk found at that stage that the ATF rule violated the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, the very statute the Biden administration claimed as its legal authority.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who challenged the rule alongside gun rights groups, said at the time: "I am relieved that we were able to secure a restraining order that will prevent this illegal rule from taking effect."

Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, was more pointed in his criticism of the administration's motives:

"President Biden and his anti-gun administration have aggressively pursued an agenda meant to harass, intimidate, and criminalize gun owners and dealers at every turn."

Gun Owners of America posted on X after Thursday's ruling, calling it a "smackdown" and noting that Kacsmaryk had both denied the DOJ's request to lift the injunction and criticized ATF's newly proposed replacement rule.

The Biden administration's broader pattern of using executive action to bypass Congress, from immigration policy to firearms regulation, has drawn sustained legal challenges, and Thursday's ruling adds to a growing list of judicial rejections.

AG Blanche announced 34 ATF rule changes, but Biden-era rules keep dragging through court

Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed at an April 30 press conference that at least 34 rule changes would be published by ATF. Among those changes: repeal of the controversial "stabilizing brace" rule, alterations to the "bump stocks" regulation, and modifications to the "Engaged in the Business" rule at the center of Thursday's decision.

But even as the current administration moves to unwind Biden-era firearms regulations through the rulemaking process, the legal fights over those regulations continue to consume court time and DOJ resources. The DOJ's decision to ask the court to lift the injunction, rather than simply letting the rule die, suggests the department may have been trying to preserve the regulatory framework's legal viability even as the administration publicly committed to rolling it back.

That tension, between an administration pledging to undo Biden-era overreach and a DOJ still defending elements of it in court, raises questions about how cleanly the federal bureaucracy can reverse course. When agencies spend years building regulatory infrastructure, friction between political leadership and institutional inertia is almost inevitable.

Several questions remain unanswered. The DOJ has not explained its legal rationale for seeking to revive a rule the court has twice found unlawful. The plaintiffs who originally challenged the regulation have not been identified in available reporting. And the full text of Kacsmaryk's ruling, beyond the two quoted passages, has not been made public in detail.

What is clear: the Biden administration's most ambitious attempt to expand federal firearms licensing requirements through regulation rather than legislation has now been blocked for more than two years, across multiple court orders, by a judge who has consistently found the effort unlawful.

When Congress won't pass a law, agencies shouldn't be allowed to write one, and it shouldn't take a federal judge to remind Washington of that basic principle.