March 16, 2026 11:42 AM UTC

Meet a Colorado Anti-LGBTQ Lawyer Tapped to Lead U.S. Department of Justice’s Gun Rights Division

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Another of Colorado’s worst and dimmest — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Originally posted at the Colorado Times Recorder

Barry Arrington, a right-wing attorney who’s worked for multiple anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and pro-gun groups in Colorado, has been tapped to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section.

Arrington’s hiring is likely an ill omen for LGBTQ rights in the U.S., coming amid a surge of anti-trans policies and proposals from both the federal government and Republican-led state governments.

Under U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ has reportedly weighed rule changes intended to ban transgender people nationwide from owning guns.

Arrington, who told the Colorado Times Recorder that he starts at the DOJ on March 23 but declined to answer questions, served as a lawyer for the anti-LGBTQ group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF); last year, he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, ADF’s case against Colorado’s conversion therapy ban. The majority-conservative court is now poised to overturn the ban, legalizing discredited practices that aim to change LGBTQ people’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

Arrington’s opposition to equality for LGBTQ people goes back to the days before same-sex marriage was legalized by Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. In a 2014 blog post, Arrington wrote that same-sex marriage should be banned for, as he put it, going against humans’ biological design.

“A man’s body is designed to be complementary with a woman’s body and vice versa,” he wrote. “All of the confusion about whether same-sex relations are licit would be swept away in an instant if everyone acknowledged this obvious truth.”

Arrington’s resume includes providing legal representation for a charter school that banned its valedictorian from coming out as gay in his graduation speech, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners’ 2019 lawsuit against Colorado’s gun magazine ban, and a church challenging COVID lockdown restrictions. He also represented former Trump attorney Sidney Powell in a defamation case, brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer, over her claims that Coomer had helped rig the 2020 election.

Arrington was once on the board of the Independence Institute, a multi-issue libertarian activist organization based in Denver.

Arrington’s appointment was announced in a press release from Texas Gun Rights (where Arrington served as Board Chairman until taking the DOJ position).