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Orlando Sentinel, Joe Burbank / AP

George Zimmerman, left, stands with defense counsel Mark OMara during closing arguments in his trial at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center, in Sanford, Fla., July 12,2013.

By Jennifer Kay and Eric Tucker, Associated Press

Published Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015 | 11:07 a.m.

Updated Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015 | 1:35 p.m.

MIAMI George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in a 2012 confrontation with the teenager, will not face federal charges, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The decision, announced in the waning days of Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure, resolves a case that focused on self-defense gun laws and became a flashpoint in the national conversation about race two years before the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting.

Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense when he shot the 17-year-old Martin during a confrontation inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida, just outside Orlando. Martin, who was black, was unarmed when he was killed. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.

Once Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder by a state jury in July 2013, Martin's family turned to the federal investigation in hopes that he would be held accountable for the shooting.

That probe focused on whether the killing amounted to a federal civil rights violation, which would have required proof that it was motivated by racial animosity. The Justice Department said there was not enough evidence to establish that Zimmerman willfully deprived Martin of his civil rights a difficult legal standard to meet or killed the teenager on account of his race.

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Zimmerman wont face federal charges in Trayvon Martin shooting