Federal Judge Says Registry of Untaxed NFA Items Violates Constitution

Second Amendment advocates have won an important victory in federal court, with a judge in Texas ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in a case challenging the registration requirements on National Firearms Act items that have had their taxes zeroed out by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

In his decision, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix agreed with the plaintiffs in two consolidated lawsuits that the NFA’s regulatory provisions for untaxed firearms exceed Congress’s Article I enumerated powers. Hendrix, however, declined to opine on whether those same provisions infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

By zeroing out the transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms, Congress eliminated the constitutional basis for the regulations that formerly supported the taxes for those firearms. No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified—as they have been for nearly 90 years—under Congress’s taxing power. And because Congress enacted the challenged NFA provisions under the Taxing Clause only, the NFA cannot be retroactively justified under another power that Congress never invoked, such as its authority to regulate interstate commerce. Thus, the challenged NFA provisions exceed Congress’s enumerated powers.

So what does this mean going forward? Well, Hendrix noted that the Supreme Court has limited the injunctive power of lower courts. 

Remedy-wise, the plaintiffs in both cases are entitled to a permanent injunction barring enforcement of the challenged NFA provisions against them, their members, and their customers. But that is as far as it goes. Federal courts lack power to issue universal injunctions that provide relief to parties not before the Court. See Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606U.S. 831 (2025). 

The Court’s remedy is limited in other respects, too. The Jensen plaintiffs lack Article III standing to challenge the NFA’s regulation of “any other weapon”—the final, defined group of miscellaneous firearms—because they did not establish as much from the start of the case. The Court also declines to issue the requested declaratory judgments because they would provide no further relief.

But to be clear: The challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional. Congress’s choice to eliminate the transfer and making taxes matters, and the defendants cannot save the NFA’s regulatory scheme by referring to a power that Congress never invoked. Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.

The organizational plaintiffs in Jensen and Silencer Shop are Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Texas State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation, and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Hendrix’s decision applies to all current and future members of these organizations, which is a plus. But as Firearms Policy Coalition notes, the judge’s order today also comes with a catch. 

The court’s judgment says that the injunction applies to the plaintiffs’ members “both current and future”, but does not take effect for seven days so the government has a chance to appeal: pic.twitter.com/iGk5su5F8C

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) August 5, 2026

Will the DOJ appeal? The plaintiffs in these cases would like the Trump administration to take the loss, but so too would many members of Congress. Remember, House and Senate Republicans tried to ditch the registration requirement along with the $200 transfer taxes on most NFA items in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the registration repeal was deemed not germane to the budget bill by the Senate parliamentarian. If the DOJ accepts today’s verdict, that would largely accomplish the goal of most Republicans in Congress. Those same Republicans are also working to include language scrapping the registration requirements in potential reconciliation bill, but that bill is still very much a work in progress and might not even come to fruition. 

The only real positive that could come from a DOJ appeal would be a universal injunction from the Supreme Court once Jensen and Silencer Shop get to SCOTUS. That could be several years away, though, and there’s no guarantee that the Court would even grant cert to the case once it’s been fully litigated by the lower courts. I’d much rather see the Justice Department drop its defense of the NFA registration requirement than appeal Hendrix’s decision to the Fifth Circuit and keep this litigation going for another few years.