Withdrawing the Attorney General's Delegation of Authority

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <SUBAGY>Office of the Attorney General</SUBAGY> <CFR>27 CFR Part 478</CFR> <CFR>28 CFR Part 0</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. OLP-179; AG Order No. 6212-2025]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1105-AB78</RIN> <SUBJECT>Withdrawing the Attorney General's Delegation of Authority</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Attorney General, Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Interim final rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This interim final rule (“IFR”) amends the Department of Justice (“Department”) regulations relating to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) by withdrawing effectively moribund regulations regarding how ATF will adjudicate applications for relief from the disabilities imposed by certain firearms laws and withdrawing a related delegation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This interim final rule is effective March 20, 2025. <E T="03">Comments:</E> Written comments must be submitted on or before June 18, 2025. Comments postmarked on or before that date will be considered timely. The electronic Federal Docket Management System will accept comments until midnight Eastern Time on that date. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> If you wish to provide comments regarding this rulemaking, you must submit comments, identified by the agency name and referencing RIN 1105-AB78 or Docket No. OLP-179, by one of the two methods below. • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the website instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Paper comments that duplicate an electronic submission are unnecessary. If you wish to submit a paper comment in lieu of electronic submission, please direct the mail to: Robert Hinchman, Senior Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, Room 4252 RFK Building, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20530. To ensure proper handling, please reference the agency name and RIN 1105-AB78 or Docket No. OLP-179 on your correspondence. Mailed items must be postmarked on or before the submission deadline. Comments submitted in a manner other than the ones listed above, including emails or letters sent to the Department officials, will not be considered comments on the IFR and may not receive a response from the Department. Please note that the Department cannot accept any comments that are hand-delivered or couriered. In addition, the Department cannot accept comments contained on any form of digital media storage devices, such as CDs/DVDs and USB drives. As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rule may be found in the docket for this rulemaking at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Robert Hinchman, Senior Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, telephone (202) 514-8059 (not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> Interested persons are invited to participate in this rulemaking by submitting written data, views, or arguments on all aspects of this rule. The Department also invites comments that relate to the economic or federalism effects that might result from this rule. Comments that will provide the most assistance to the Department in developing these procedures will reference a specific portion of the rule, explain the reason for any recommended change, and include data, information, or authority that supports such recommended change. Comments must be submitted in English or accompanied by an English translation. Each submitted comment should include the agency name and reference RIN 1105-AB78 or Docket No. OLP-179 for this rulemaking. Please note that all properly received comments are considered part of the public record and generally may be made available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Such information includes personally identifying information (such as name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter. The Department may, in its discretion, withhold from public viewing information provided in comments that it determines may impact the privacy of an individual or is offensive. But all submissions may be posted, without change, to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, you may wish to limit the amount of personal information you include in your submission. For additional information, please read the Privacy Act notice that is available via the link in the footer of <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> If you want to submit personally identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment and identify what information you want redacted. The redacted personally identifying information will be placed in the agency's public docket file but not posted online. If you want to submit confidential business information as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You also must prominently identify confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment has so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, all or part of that comment may not be posted on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> The redacted confidential business information will not be placed in the public docket file. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory Framework</HD> Federal law prohibits several categories of persons from “possess[ing] in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition.” 18 U.S.C. 922(g). By statute, it also provides that any “person who is prohibited from possessing, shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition may make application to the Attorney General for relief from th[at] disabilit[y]” and that “the Attorney General may grant such relief if it is established to his satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant's record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.” 18 U.S.C. 925(c). The first version of these provisions was enacted in 1968, <E T="03">see</E> Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, Public Law 90-351, 82 Stat. 197 (Jun. 19, 1968). Initially, the Secretary of the Treasury was empowered to provide relief only to a “person who has been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year (other than a crime involving the use of a firearm or other weapon or a violation of this chapter or of the National Firearms Act).” <E T="03">Id.</E> at 233. Over time, however, that authority was transferred to the Attorney General and expanded to allow the Attorney General to provide relief to any “person who is prohibited from possessing, shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition” and to allow such a person to “make application to the Attorney General for relief from the disabilities imposed by Federal laws.” 18 U.S.C. 925(c). Regulations establishing a process to implement the relief-from-disabilities provisions of 18 U.S.C. 925(c) were also first promulgated in 1968. <E T="03">See</E> Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, 33 FR 18555 (Dec. 14, 1968). Initially, those regulations delegated the Secretary of the Treasury's authority to adjudicate applications to remove disabilities under 18 U.S.C. 925(c) to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. <E T="03">See</E> 26 CFR 178.144 (1968). Treasury Department Order 221 (June 6, 1972) created the forerunner of ATF, within the Department of the Treasury, effective July 1, 1972. <E T="03">See</E> 37 FR 11696. In 1975, the Secretary of the Treasury “transfer[red] the functions, powers and duties of the Internal Revenue Service arising under laws relating to alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives” to this new entity. <E T="03">See</E> Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, 40 FR 16835 (Apr. 15, 1975). Under title XI, subtitle B, section 1111 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135 (2002) (“HSA”), the “authorities, functions, personnel, and assets” of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Department of the Treasury were transferred to the Department, with the exception of certain enumerated authorities retained by the Department of the Treasury. <E T="03">Id.</E> 1111(c)(2), (d). In short, the HSA created two separate agencies, ATF in the Department and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in the Department of the Treasury. Under 28 U.S.C. 509, “[a]ll functions of other officers of the Department of Justice and all functions of agencies and employees of the Department of Justice are vested in the Attorney General,” except for functions not relevant here. Moreover, the HSA expressly provided that “the Attorney General may make such provisions as the Attorney General determines appropriate to authorize the performance by any officer, employee, or agency of the Department of Justice of any function transferred to the Attorney General under this section.” HSA 1111; <E T="03">see also</E> 28 U.S.C. 510 (“The Attorney General may from time to time make such provisions as he considers appropriate authorizing the performance by any other officer, employee, or agency of the Department of Justice of any function of the ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 31k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━