Fed up with their tax dollars being wasted by a University of Minnesota program advocating for more restrictive gun control laws, a Minnesota pro-gun organization is asking both the federal Department of Justice and the Department of Education to investigate.
In a recent social media post, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus (MCGO) announced that the organization had sent a letter to the DOJ and DOE asking them to investigate the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Control Litigation Clinic.
The clinic is ostensibly in business to provide students with experience on cases related to so-called “gun violence,” more appropriately called criminal violence.
“The Gun Violence Prevention Clinic will offer students a unique experiential learning opportunity to work on litigation affecting a significant societal problem,” the organization’s website states. “The Clinic will litigate affirmative cases that will reduce injuries, deaths, and trauma caused by gun violence, challenge overreaching gun laws, and defend gun laws and regulations against legal challenges.”
MCGO says, however, that the clinic, which is led by a former litigator at extremely anti-gun Everytown Law, is little more than a partnership with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office and is operating as a political and legal arm of the Walz/Ellison Administration’s gun control strategy.
“Their activities are not good-faith exercises in legal education, public service, or even legal education,” the tweet stated. “Instead, they are engaged in taxpayer-funded litigation activism aimed at dismantling one of our nation’s core constitutional freedoms—the Second Amendment. There is no place for this at a public university.”
In the letter, MCGO provided more details about the clinic’s partnership with the state’s anti-gun administration.
“This publicly supported program, established in 2023, is using state, university and private grant funding to engage in one-sided legal advocacy in support of a broad gun control agenda that undermines the constitutional rights of Minnesota residents,” the letter stated. “Law students in the clinic serve as Special Assistant Attorneys General, directly participating in legal efforts designed not to study or neutrally interpret the law—but to actively shape policy and restrict the exercise of Second Amendment rights.”
MCGO said it is particularly worried that federal education funds, whether through Title IX support, federal legal clinic grants or broader institutional funding, might be subsidizing the clinic’s activities, implicating federal civil rights protections and Department of Education compliance obligations.
Ultimately, the group wants federal officials from the DOJ and DOE to investigate the clinic to determine if public funds are being used to push an anti-gun agenda at a federally funded school.
“We respectfully request that the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division initiate a pattern-or-practice investigation into this coordinated effort by the State of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota to suppress constitutionally protected conduct and silence dissenting views,” the letter concluded. “(We also request) that the U.S. Department of Education should conduct a comprehensive audit of federal funds directed to the University of Minnesota Law School, specifically viewing whether such funds are supporting advocacy programs that violate constitutional norms, limit academic freedom or compromise institutional neutrality.”
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