Key Takeaways
- The Justice Department plans to file a lawsuit against San Jose over its $1,591 concealed carry license fee, claiming it infringes on Second Amendment rights.
- Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon argues that this fee disproportionately impacts low-income individuals and lacks constitutional justification.
- The lawsuit will challenge both the exorbitant fee and the enforcement practices of San Jose police as unconstitutional.
- The Department may negotiate with San Jose, but requires the city to halt the fee’s enforcement and acknowledge its unconstitutionality.
- San Jose’s fee is part of broader issues in Santa Clara County, where legal challenges over excessive fees are also underway.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
SAN JOSE, CA — The Justice Department has authorized a federal lawsuit against the City of San Jose over the $1,591 it charges residents to apply for a concealed carry license, and it has given the city until 5:00 p.m. Eastern on September 15, 2026 to say whether it wants to negotiate first.
When the City Council pushed that fee to $1,591, I covered it in It Now Costs $1,591 Just to Apply for a Carry Permit in San Jose, and That’s Before Training. What has changed is that the federal government has now weighed in. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Civil Rights Division, sent a September 9, 2026 letter to Mayor Matt Mahan, Police Chief Paul Joseph, and City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood, and posted it publicly the same day. Its subject line reads “Notice of Suit: United States v. City of San Jose.”
The increase was adopted this year under Resolution No. 2026-183. The letter walks through what the neighbors charge for the same license. San Francisco charges $144. Berkeley charges $255 to apply and $325 more once an applicant is approved. Santa Clara charges $488 up front and $488 at issuance. Alameda County charges $347 and $346. “To our knowledge,” Dhillon wrote, “San Jose charges the highest CCW application fee in the entire nation.”
A number that size does not screen out dangerous applicants. It screens out people who do not have $1,591, and that is not a category the Second Amendment recognizes.
Dhillon made the same argument publicly the day the letter went out. “Constitutional rights aren’t for sale,” she wrote on X. “Charging $1,600 to carry a firearm outside the home is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
The letter’s legal argument runs through Bruen, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that let states keep shall-issue permit systems. Shall issue means the agency has to grant the permit once an applicant meets the written requirements, and the Court said governments may charge fees for that process. But it drew a line: a licensing scheme cannot be “put toward abusive ends” by imposing “exorbitant fees [that] deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.” Dhillon leaned on that word. “In the United States, keeping and bearing arms is not a luxury enjoyed by the privileged few,” she wrote, quoting Heller. “It is a right enjoyed by all ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.'” The letter also cites McDonald v. City of Chicago and the Court’s 2026 decision in Wolford v. Lopez.
The complaint Dhillon says she has already authorized will carry two claims. The first is that the fee itself denies ordinary citizens their Second Amendment right to carry in public. The second is aimed at the police department. Because San Jose officers are the ones enforcing the fee schedule, the letter alleges that enforcement amounts to a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct under 34 U.S.C. § 12601, the federal statute that lets the Justice Department sue a police agency for systematic unconstitutional policing rather than going after a single bad stop. The letter cites United States v. County of Maricopa, a 2018 Ninth Circuit decision holding that officers enforcing an unconstitutional local policy violate that statute.
The Department says it will consider holding off on filing for a short period if San Jose comes to the table, but it set a floor on what any deal has to include. The city would have to immediately stop enforcing the fees, acknowledge that they are unconstitutional, and agree to a court-enforceable consent decree permanently barring it from doing the same thing again. A consent decree is a settlement a federal judge signs and can enforce, which means the city would not be able to quietly reinstate the fee later without answering to the court.
The letter doubles as a document-retention notice, instructing city officials, employees, and contractors to preserve records, emails, photos, videos, and computer files relevant to the matter. If San Jose wants to negotiate, it was told to contact Barry Arrington, Chief of the Division’s Second Amendment Section.
San Jose is not the only pressure point in the area. The city sits inside Santa Clara County, and the county is already in federal court over its own fees. According to the Second Amendment Foundation’s case page for Blank v. Santa Clara County, filed September 22, 2025 in the Northern District of California, the Sheriff’s Department amended its fee schedule to $976, a $488 initial fee plus a $488 issuance fee, up from $662. SAF says that figure excludes a required training course that typically runs $250 to $400, and that the department makes every applicant sit for a psychological examination costing around $500. SAF, joined by the California Rifle and Pistol Association and several individual plaintiffs, alleges there is no statutory or constitutional authority for conditioning a fundamental right on universal psychological testing without evidence or good cause. Those are allegations by a party to the case, and the court has not ruled on them. The docket shows the case is active, with a status conference held August 4, 2026 before Judge Edward J. Davila and a motion to intervene set for hearing on September 17, 2026.
More from USA Carry:
Anyone applying anywhere in the state should walk in knowing the full cost and the full process, which is why I keep a standing breakdown of California concealed carry requirements. The check you write for the application is rarely the whole bill.
I will continue tracking the Civil Rights Division’s action against San Jose and the Blank litigation in the Northern District of California.
