Brief of The New Civil Liberties Alliance and W. Clark Aposhian as Amicus Curiae in Support of Appellants
The Constitution provides foundational rules for the operation of our government. Congress writes the laws. The Executive Branch enforces them. And the Judiciary independently interprets them. But this case threatens to consolidate all three functions in a single administrative agency—the ATF—and to contravene both the laws written by Congress and prior judicial interpretations of those laws. Worse, the ATF has rewritten a criminal statute and is prepared to prosecute hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens who relied on prior approval of their ownership of “bump stocks” from that same agency.