LA Sheriff Settles Carry Rights Lawsuit After Years of Permit Delays
The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners have reached a settlement resolving the remaining claims against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in a major lawsuit challenging California’s obstruction of the right to bear arms.
The agreement in California Rifle & Pistol Association v. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department follows LASD’s representation that it is now processing concealed carry weapon applications within the 120-day period required under California law.
The settlement is not yet final. It remains subject to approval by the Los Angeles County Claims Board, according to the Second Amendment Foundation.
“This settlement marks meaningful progress, but our work to secure full recognition of the right to carry—including true interstate reciprocity—continues,” SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said.
The separate lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against LASD over its carry-permit delays is not resolved by this settlement and remains pending.
A Settlement Built on Real Concessions
SAF, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, and several individual plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in December 2023.
The case challenged a collection of barriers California officials erected around the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right. Those included LASD’s extreme processing delays, California’s refusal to provide most nonresidents with a way to obtain a carry permit, high licensing costs, psychological examinations, and other subjective requirements.
The settlement resolves the remaining claims against LASD after the department represented that it had brought its processing times into compliance with the state’s 120-day deadline. That is a major change from the delays that helped trigger the litigation.
When the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction, some applicants had been waiting approximately 18 months for LASD to act. The federal court concluded that such delays went too far and granted relief to two individual plaintiffs.
The court also ordered California to allow qualified nonresidents who belonged to the plaintiff organizations to apply for California carry permits. California lawmakers later enacted AB 1078, creating a broader nonresident licensing process and largely codifying that part of the court’s injunction.
The case therefore ends with more than a negotiated dismissal. It produced changes that directly affect Californians and visitors seeking to lawfully carry a firearm for self-defense.
The Right Does Not Belong to the Bureaucracy
California officials have spent years treating the Second Amendment as though it were a privilege they may ration through delays, costs, and paperwork.
The Second Amendment protects the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms. It contains no California-residency exception and no bureaucratic-convenience exception. It does not permit a sheriff to suspend the right for a year or longer because the department is understaffed or has failed to build a functional application system.
A permit does not create the right. The right existed before the application was submitted, before the sheriff reviewed it, and before California wrote its licensing statutes.
Hostile jurisdictions learned an obvious lesson after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Once officials could no longer demand that applicants prove some special “good cause” to carry a handgun, they looked for other ways to slow the process.
A licensing system may say “shall issue” on paper while operating as “shall wait” in practice.
Years-long delays accomplish much the same thing as an outright denial. Citizens who need to defend themselves today receive no protection from a permit that might arrive two years from now.
The Supreme Court anticipated that problem in Bruen, warning that supposedly objective licensing systems could still face constitutional challenges when lengthy processing times or exorbitant fees prevent ordinary citizens from exercising the right to public carry.
That warning was not an invitation for California officials to test exactly how long they could make people wait.
More Than One Lawsuit Pressured LASD
The settlement also comes amid federal scrutiny of LASD’s carry-licensing operation.
The Justice Department sued the department in September 2025, accusing it of using administrative delay to deny citizens their Second Amendment rights. According to the federal complaint, LASD received 3,982 new carry applications between January 2024 and March 2025 but issued only two permits from that group during the period examined.
Applicants allegedly waited an average of 281 days merely for LASD to begin processing their applications. Some reportedly waited as long as 1,030 days—nearly three years.
LASD attributed its backlog to staffing shortages and its transition from a paper-based process to an online system. Those explanations may describe how the failure occurred, but they do not excuse it. The government cannot avoid its constitutional obligations by pointing to problems of its own making.
The DOJ case remains active despite SAF’s settlement, leaving additional pressure on the department to maintain its claimed compliance.
Progress, Not Full Reciprocity
The settlement should not be mistaken for California recognizing carry permits issued by other states.
Nonresidents now have a path to apply for a California permit, but they must still submit to California’s licensing process. That is a meaningful improvement over excluding nonresidents altogether, but it falls short of true interstate reciprocity.
Likewise, forcing LASD to act within 120 days is better than allowing applications to collect dust for 18 months or three years. Four months, however, should not be treated as the constitutional gold standard for exercising an enumerated right.
This settlement is nevertheless a significant conclusion to a lawsuit that forced one of the country’s most anti-gun jurisdictions to change its conduct. LASD says it is finally processing applications within the law. California now allows qualified nonresidents to apply. Other statutory barriers were changed while the case was pending.
Those results were not offered voluntarily. Gun owners had to sue for them.
SAF and its partners say they will continue monitoring the situation to ensure LASD does not return to its old practices. That vigilance is necessary because California’s respect for the Second Amendment has too often lasted only as long as an injunction, settlement, or federal lawsuit remained hanging over the state.
The Constitution says the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” After years of delay and litigation, Los Angeles County is finally being made to act like those words mean something.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor to AmmoLand News and serves as part of the editorial team responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.