A recent ruling out of a Virginia state court could add to the list of gun measures Democrats will seek to pass should they retake trifecta control of the state next month.

Judge F. Patrick Yeatts of Virginia’s Twenty-Fourth Judicial Circuit on Thursday issued a permanent injunction against the state’s universal background check law. In a lawsuit brought by the Virginia Citizens Defense League and Gun Owners of America, Yeatts stopped short of declaring that the law violated the Second Amendment. However, he did determine that a unique interaction between state and federal law as they relate to handgun sales for young adults rendered the whole statute invalid.

“In exercising judicial restraint, the Court finds it improper to resolve the question of firearm regulation through the lens of Bruen,” Judge Yeatts wrote in Wilson v. Hanley. “Instead, the inherent as-applied constitutional deficiencies of the Act require that the court strike the statute in its entirety.”

Virginia’s universal background check law, like those found in nearly two dozen other states, requires criminal background checks to be conducted on private person-to-person sales of used firearms. The wrinkle Yeatts identified comes from the fact that the state relies on the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to screen all gun sales. Federal law also generally sets 21 as the minimum age for customers of licensed dealers, who are the primary parties that are allowed to use NICS. Virginia state law, meanwhile, allows 18-year-olds to purchase and possess handguns.

Before the passage of the state’s universal background check law an 18-to-20-year-old Virginian attempting to buy a handgun could do so through a private sale. However, the law now requires all transfers associated with private sales to go through licensed dealers and obtain a NICS check. That makes it nearly impossible for 18-to-20-year-olds to legally buy guns.

Yeatts previously issued a narrow injunction against Virginia’s law in 2020 that applied only to 18-to-20-year-olds. But in Thursday’s ruling, he said he was compelled to expand that injunction to the entire law based on Supreme Court of the United States precedent in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, which considered the proper remedy when a portion of a statute is found unconstitutional.

He said that under Ayotte’s three-prong test for determining when courts can sever unconstitutional provisions from statutes, Virginia’s universal background check regime “cannot remain intact.”

“If the Court were to merely hold the Act unconstitutional as-applied and simply sever those 18 to 20 years of age, the Court would be ignoring the constitutional deficiencies in the enforcement of the Act,” he wrote. “After applying the Ayotte framework, the Court finds that it is left with one option at this time-that is, to strike the statute in its entirety for the reasons set forth herein.”

Importantly, however, he also emphasized that he was not deciding that background check requirements in general are unconstitutional. In fact, he cited Nevada (which sets 21 as the minimum age to purchase a handgun) and its universal background check law as an example of a state treating gun buyers of all ages equally and suggested that lawmakers could simply amend the Virginia statute to shore up its constitutional issues.

“If the legislature wishes to rewrite the law to create a system that does not impose disparate treatment based on age, it may do so,” he wrote. “At that time, a court might rightly address the question of whether it is constitutional to require a background check to obtain a handgun through a private sale. Now is not that time.”

That suggestion may further motivate a Democratic legislature that’s already eager to see new gun-control measures enacted into law.

Virginia’s now-enjoined universal background check measure was a foundational piece of the state’s post-2019 push toward stricter gun laws spearheaded by former Governor Ralph Northam (D.), with the support of Democratic controlled legislative chambers. But for the election of Governor Glenn Youngkin (R.) and for Republicans briefly retaking the state house in 2021, that likely would have expanded over the last four years.

In fact, Youngkin has vetoed more than 50 new gun-control bills combined over the previous two legislative sessions alone, following Democrats’ retaking of the state house. They covered everything from AR-15 sales bans to new gun-carry restrictions.

With Youngkin term-limited, and former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D.) currently favored in the polls to replace him next month, there’s a strong possibility Democrats could soon control all levers of state government again. And while it is an open question as to whether Virginia Democrats will be quite as aggressive in proposing and voting for sweeping gun bills under a Democratic Governor who’s likely to enact them (rather than provide a useful political foil in the form of a veto), it’s a fairly safe bet that any Democratic trifecta will at least be willing to bring reinstitute gun control it already passed—even if it means taking away handguns from adults under 21 to do it.

Of course, the dynamic created by Yeatts’s ruling cuts both ways. It could stand to motivate gun-control activists to turn out and push Spanberger across the finish line. It could also draw gun owners to vote for Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in hopes of keeping a bulwark against new restrictions in the governor’s mansion.

Either way, the gun stakes in Virginia have now risen above even the already elevated level they’d been at over the duration of the race.