Feds fire back against Florida’s gun sales lawsuit

By Jim Saunders ©2024 The News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE — The Biden administration this week urged a U.S. district judge to toss out a Florida lawsuit challenging a new federal rule that requires more gun sellers to be licensed and run background checks on buyers, disputing state arguments about lost tax revenue from gun shows.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys filed a 27-page motion Monday seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, which Florida filed in May and revised this month. The rule, which the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives finalized in April, is an outgrowth of a 2022 federal law, known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, that made changes to the longstanding background-check system.

Florida contends that the rule violates another federal law, the Administrative Procedure Act. In the revised lawsuit, the state argued, in part, that the rule has led to lower attendance at gun shows — resulting in reduced tax revenue from purchases of admission tickets.

But the Justice Department attorneys blasted the argument in this week’s motion to dismiss, saying the state did not “provide a basis for inferring a causal link between the rule and the myriad decisions about whether to attend certain gun shows made by individuals whose conduct in no way implicates the rule.”

“Indeed, there are plenty of reasons why Floridians might elect not to attend a particular gun show — e.g., a general increase in firearms prices, changes in purchasing preferences, poor advertising or show management, bad weather, et cetera,” the motion said. “And Florida’s complaint wholly fails to plausibly establish that the rule was instead the cause of the … decline in gun show attendance that the state alleges.”

But the revised lawsuit, filed Aug. 12 by Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, said the state’s “asserted injury — lost tax revenue — is clear and ongoing.”

“Ordinarily, gun shows in Florida during the summer months of June, July and August enjoy high attendance rates — often hosting thousands of people at a single show,” the lawsuit said. “But since the challenged rule went into effect on May 20, attendance at these summer gun shows across the state has decreased precipitously. In some parts of Florida, total attendance at such shows have dropped by as much as 50 percent, costing the state revenue from the 6 percent sales tax it would have earned on each admission ticket.”

The gun-show issue is important, at least in part, because Florida is trying to use lost tax revenue to establish legal standing in the case. Essentially, Florida contends the rule is causing it to suffer damages. Standing is an initial hurdle that plaintiffs must clear, and the Justice Department argues the lawsuit should be dismissed because Florida doesn’t have standing to challenge the rule

When the rule was finalized, the Biden administration said the changes were designed to close “loopholes” in the system that requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks. An overview posted on the White House website said “a growing number of unlicensed sellers continue to sell firearms for profit to complete strangers they meet at gun shows and online marketplaces, which has been a critical gap in the background check laws.”

In part, the rule changed a definition of being “engaged in the business” as a firearms dealer who needs to be licensed, according to court documents filed by Justice Department attorneys. The revised definition applies to a “person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms. The term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of the person’s personal collection of firearms.”

Justice Department attorneys argued in this week’s motion that the definition closely tracks the 2022 law. But in alleging violations of the federal Administrative Procedure Act, the state contended that the “Biden Administration now seeks to exploit the minor changes to federal law enacted in the BSCA (Bipartisan Safer Communities Act) to implement President Biden’s preferred policies by executive fiat.”

While a majority of states rely on the FBI to conduct background checks, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement handles checks in Florida. In the lawsuit, the state argued that the rule would force the FDLE to conduct more background checks, requiring more resources.

But in the motion to dismiss, Justice Department attorneys called that a “self-inflicted harm.” It said “any harms Florida suffers from conducting background checks result from its voluntary decision to perform services that the federal government is otherwise willing to perform (and does perform for the majority of states) for free.”

The lawsuit, filed in Tampa, is assigned to U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell.