When Virginia State Police announced last week that it would resume enforcing the commonwealth’s universal background check requirement for private firearm sales — in direct defiance of a Lynchburg Circuit Court injunction that halted enforcement of the law — gun-rights groups didn’t wait around to see what would happen next. They went straight back to court.
On June 3, the court delivered exactly the response Virginia’s executive branch should have expected.
Judge F. Patrick Yeatts ruled that his statewide permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply with that order. The ruling shut down Attorney General Jay Jones’s apparent theory that an executive branch officer can effectively dissolve a court injunction by deciding it no longer applies — and confirmed what gun-rights groups had been arguing since the State Police announcement: that the executive branch doesn’t get to unilaterally override court orders just because new legislation passes.
What just happened
As TTAG reported earlier this week, the dispute began when the Virginia Attorney General’s office informed the Virginia Citizens Defense League that Virginia State Police would resume universal background checks for private firearm sales — despite Judge Yeatts’s October 29, 2025, permanent injunction halting enforcement of that exact law.
Gun Owners of America and VCDL responded immediately with a contempt of court motion. The motion’s framing was unusually direct:
“It appears that the Commonwealth’s Executive Branch of government no longer has any respect for the rule of law. From the same Attorney General who brazenly sought to usurp his predecessor’s constitutional role before he even assumed office, Attorney General Jay Jones now informs this Court that its October 29, 2025, Final Order means nothing, and that Jones, as an executive branch officer and officer of the court, may unilaterally determine that a court’s order is no longer in effect.”
The court didn’t take long to agree.
The ruling
Judge Yeatts confirmed on June 3 that his permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply. The court has called both parties back later this month for further proceedings in the ongoing case.
Within hours, Virginia State Police updated its website to reflect the court’s ruling. The page now states the agency is “in compliance with the injunction” and “currently cannot provide criminal history background checks for the private sale of firearms.”
That’s a quick reversal from the position Virginia State Police took last week. It’s also the correct one — the position the agency should have been taking all along, before the AG’s office decided that new legislation gave the executive branch authority to ignore court orders without going back to court first.
What this means
The ruling matters beyond the specific background check question because it confirms something fundamental about how court orders work in the American legal system. An injunction remains in effect until the issuing court dissolves it. Executive branch officers — including state attorneys general, governors, and law enforcement agencies — don’t get to decide on their own that an injunction no longer applies. If the state believes the injunction should be lifted because circumstances have changed (new legislation, new facts, whatever), the proper procedure is to return to the court and seek dissolution.
Virginia tried to skip that step. The court told them no.