In Minneapolis and St. Paul, buying a firearm can take up to 60 days. Renewing a U.S. passport takes six to eight weeks. A constitutional right and a travel document are now on roughly the same timeline in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
The Trump Department of Justice filed suit on September 24 to end it.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said, "A right delayed is a right denied," she said. The lawsuit targets Minnesota's hybrid waiting-period and permit-to-purchase scheme, which layers state delays on top of the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System — a system designed, by its name, to be instant.
Minnesota law imposes a 30-day standard waiting period. In practice, Minneapolis under Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul under Mayor Kaohly Her have stretched that to nearly 60 days. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division, through its Second Amendment Section, argues the delays are unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's modern Second Amendment framework.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen made the enforcement posture explicit: federal officials "will not tolerate procedures used to impair Minnesotans' right to purchase firearms."
The Justice Department gave Minnesota fair warning. On September 17, officials delivered a formal notice to state and local authorities. The deadline for settlement talks was September 23. Minnesota didn't come to the table. The suit was filed the next day.
The DOJ filing includes a detail that strips away the bureaucratic abstraction. "For a person facing a credible threat at home, 30 or 60 days is not an administrative inconvenience. It can be the entire emergency." That's the fact that makes the waiting-period debate something other than a policy argument. A woman with a restraining order against an ex-partner doesn't have 60 days. A shop owner who's been robbed twice doesn't have 60 days.
Governor Tim Walz presides over a state that managed to build a waiting-period system so slow it effectively functions as a denial. The federal background check system exists specifically so states don't need to run their own months-long process. Minnesota chose to add one anyway — then let two of its largest cities double the wait.