Feds settle lawsuit with L.A. County Sheriff's Department over concealed firearm permits

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Set us as preferred The U.S.Department of Justice and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have agreed to settle a lawsuit over what federal prosecutors alleged last year was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms for “unreasonable” lengths of time.The Sheriff’s Department will “bring its procedures in line with the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision,” the DOJ said in a statement Thursday, referring to a 2022 high court decision affirming a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.Excessively delaying applications for concealed carry permits, the DOJ had alleged, effectively violated the applicants’ constitutional rights.In response to its lawsuit, the DOJ’s statement said, the Sheriff’s Department “drastically cut those waiting times and is now in compliance with statutory deadlines.” The development is “a huge win for the residents of Los Angeles County and for the Second Amendment,” the federal agency added.“The Justice Department supports our law enforcement partners.” Assistant Atty.

Gen.Harmeet K.

Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement.“The sheriff acknowledged the problem and devoted substantial additional resources, including new processing software and additional personnel, to cutting waiting times dramatically.”The Sheriff’s Department did not immediately provide comment on the settlement.In its complaint filed in federal district court in L.A.

in September, the DOJ claimed that the Sheriff’s Department had “systematically denied thousands of law-abiding Californians their fundamental Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home — not through outright refusal, but through a deliberate pattern of unconscionable delay.”The complaint stated that between...