‘Tick Tock’: DOJ Gives Glendale, California Until Nov. 4 to Drop $2,000 Carry Permit Costs or Face a Federal Lawsuit

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GLENDALE, CA — The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has formally notified the City of Glendale, California, that it intends to sue over concealed carry permit costs that, by the Division’s count, now run about $2,000 for a first-time applicant.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced the move Wednesday in a post on X: “The City of Glendale, California, cannot impose unconstitutional $2,000 costs to obtain a concealed carry permit for lawful firearms. We @CivilRights gave them one week to fix it. Tick tock!” Attached to the post was a two-page letter dated Oct. 28. It is captioned “Notice of Suit: United States v. City of Glendale” and addressed to Mayor Ardashes Kassakhian, the city’s police chief, and City Attorney Michael Garcia.

According to the letter, Glendale raised the initial application fee for a license to carry from $100 to $1,078. It raised the renewal fee from $50 to $826. With all fees and costs added together, the Division puts a new license at about $2,000 and a renewal at about $1,300. The letter calls it “one of the most expensive CCW application schemes in the nation.”

Price is not the only complaint. The letter says some parts of Glendale’s process give licensing officials “open-ended discretion.” In the letter’s words, that turns it into the sort of “may-issue” scheme prohibited by the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision. A may-issue system lets officials decide who gets a permit based on their own judgment instead of objective requirements.

Dhillon leans on Bruen for the fee argument too. In that case, the Court said governments may run shall-issue licensing, where anyone who meets objective requirements gets a permit, as long as those systems are not “put toward abusive ends.” The Court gave “exorbitant fees [that] deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry” as an example. The letter adds that in the United States, keeping and bearing arms “is not a luxury enjoyed by the privileged few, it is a right enjoyed by all.”

Dhillon writes that she has authorized the filing of a complaint in federal district court. The complaint would allege that the city’s scheme denies ordinary citizens their Second Amendment right to public carry. It would also allege that the Glendale Police Department’s enforcement of the scheme is “a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct” under 34 U.S.C. § 12601. In plain terms, the Division is accusing the department itself, not individual officers, of routinely enforcing an unconstitutional policy. The letter states that Glendale’s officers “are required to enforce this abusive licensing scheme, and they are doing so.”

There is an off-ramp. The Division says it will consider holding off on the lawsuit “for a short period” if Glendale enters pre-suit negotiations. At a minimum, any deal must require the city to:

• Immediately stop enforcing the fees.
• Immediately stop any subjective may-issue processes in its application.
• Acknowledge that both are unconstitutional.
• Agree to a consent decree, a settlement a federal judge can enforce, permanently barring the city from violating residents’ rights through these or similar rules.

That is the week Dhillon’s “tick tock” refers to. Glendale has until 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Nov. 4, to say whether it wants to negotiate. If the Division does not hear back by then, the letter says, the United States “may file its complaint without further notice.” The letter also serves as a document-retention notice, directing city officials, employees and contractors to preserve all records that may be relevant. Barry Arrington, chief of the Division’s Second Amendment Section, is listed as the contact.

A permit system is supposed to confirm that an applicant is qualified. An application fee that jumps more than tenfold does something else. For a lot of working people, a $2,000 bill decides whether they carry at all. Good training and a solid defensive mindset already cost real time and money. Those are the investments that matter when something goes wrong, and they should not come after a city’s cut. Anyone applying should know their state’s process cold, and my concealed carry permit information by state lays it out.

More from USA Carry:

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For now, this is a notice of suit, not a filed lawsuit and not a court ruling. The next move belongs to Glendale.

I will continue tracking whether Glendale comes to the table by Nov. 4 or the Justice Department files its complaint.

Read the original story: ‘Tick Tock’: DOJ Gives Glendale, California Until Nov. 4 to Drop $2,000 Carry Permit Costs or Face a Federal Lawsuit