Minnesota Law School Clinic Could Soon Be Target of DOJ 2A Task Force Investigation

The only official DOJ investigation launched into the anti-gun policies and practices of a particular agency that’s been announced to date is the scrutiny of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s lengthy delays in issuing concealed handgun permits, but Attorney General Pam Bondi has made it clear that the Second Amendment Task Force she heads is just getting started. 

Second Amendment groups like SAF, GOA, and FPC have already offered several suggestions for future investigations, including the lack of urgency in New York City and Washington, D.C. when it comes to processing carry applications, but the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus is hoping that the DOJ won’t just focus its efforts on those tasked with enforcing the law but will also scrutinize the anti-gun academics who are defending infringements on our right to keep and bear arms at taxpayers’ expense. 

Today, we sent a letter to leaders at the United States Department of Justice and the US Department of Education requesting a federal investigation into the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Control Litigation Clinic.

This “clinic” is led by a former litigator from… pic.twitter.com/U3f70CaXmn

— MN Gun Owners Caucus (@mnguncaucus) April 21, 2025

Today, we sent a letter to leaders at the United States Department of Justice and the US Department of Education requesting a federal investigation into the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Control Litigation Clinic.

This “clinic” is led by a former litigator from Everytown Law, a gun control group. It operates in partnership with MN AG Keith Ellison’s office as a political and legal arm of the Walz/Ellison Administration’s gun control strategy.

Their activities are not good-faith exercises in legal education, public service, or even legal education; instead, they are engaged in taxpayer-funded litigation activism aimed at dismantling one of our nation’s core constitutional freedoms—the Second Amendment.

There is no place for this at a public university.

We request in our letter that US DOJ initiate a pattern-or-practice investigation into this coordinated effort by the State of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota to suppress constitutionally protected conduct and silence dissenting views; 

And that US DOE conducts a comprehensive audit of federal funds directed to the University of Minnesota Law School, specifically reviewing whether such funds are supporting advocacy programs that violate constitutional norms, limit academic freedom, or compromise institutional neutrality.

If the University of Minnesota Law School offered students a choice between working in a clinic supporting gun control and one that worked to undo constitutionally questionable statutes, you could make a plausible argument that the school isn’t engaging in viewpoint discrimination and violating its institutional neutrality. 

Unfortunately for both pro-Second Amendment students, faculty, and Minnesota taxpayers, no such choice exists. And as the MN Gun Owners Caucus points out, the clinic isn’t just giving law school students a crash course in how to argue for more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. It’s working hand in hand with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in active litigation; providing the state with a team of unpaid laborers who are engaged in dismantling a fundamental civil right. 

Unlike the anti-gun academics at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Gun Control Litigation Clinic run by former Everytown attorney Megan Walsh is part of a public university, which makes its existence an even more egregious affront. The Johns Hopkins team has also benefited from federal grants, which the Trump administration can rescind, but as a private university it has more leeway to engage in academic activism so long as donors like Michael Bloomberg are footing the bill. 

Investigating the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Control Litigation Clinic makes sense from both a policy and political standpoint. Everything the Gun Owners Caucus said about the clinic’s activities is true, which is more than enough cause to justify a DOJ investigation. The cozy relationship between the clinic and Democratic politicians like Keith Ellison should also be red meat for the Trump administration, and I hope that Bondi and the 2A Task Force will grant the Gun Owners Caucus’ request to put the clinic, the law school, and the Minnesota Attorney General under the DOJ’s microscope and curb the ongoing abuses against our right to keep and bear arms.