The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear what will likely become a landmark free speech case involving the National Rifle Association.
According to reports, the nation’s oldest gun rights group alleges that a New York state official pressured financial institutions not to do business with the organization over its unwavering support for the Second Amendment.
“The NRA says Maria Vullo, who served as superintendent of the state Department of Financial Services in 2018, used the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting to threaten institutions with action from her agency if they did not distance themselves from the NRA,” The Western Journal reported, citing a CNN story.
According to the legacy gun rights organization’s plea to the nation’s highest court, the issue is much bigger than the NRA itself, which argued: “Both this Court and the lower courts have repeatedly rejected the notion that the government’s pursuit of its regulatory goals might justify blacklisting unpopular speakers.”
“The Second Circuit’s opinion below gives state officials free rein to financially blacklist their political opponents—from gun-rights groups to abortion-rights groups, to environmentalist groups, and beyond,” the NRA wrote in its filing.
“It also allows selective investigations and penalties targeting business deals with disfavored speakers, even if the regulator’s hostility is based on an entity’s political speech and treats similarly similar deals with customers who do not have controversial views,” the NRA said.
“In sum, it lets government officials, acting with undisguised political animus, transmute ‘general backlash’ against controversial advocacy into a justification for crackdowns on advocates (and firms who serve them), eviscerating free speech rights,” the group noted further.
A lawyer for Vullo said that the state official was only offering guidance to banks and insurers who wanted to distance themselves from the NRA. But the gun rights org said that Vullo wouldn’t punish institutions for past infractions if they shunned the NRA.
As a result, said the NRA filing, “numerous financial institutions perceived Vullo’s actions as threatening and, therefore, ceased business arrangements with the NRA or refused new ones.”
In its filing, the NRA added, “An overt campaign by state officials to use regulatory power against a disfavored civil rights organization—in this case, the NRA—exactly because of its disfavored speech at least as clearly merits this Court’s attention and reversal.”
Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming jointly filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the NRA’s request to have the court hear the case.
