3/18/24

By Aditi Jha

The National Rifle Association made a First Amendment appeal to the Supreme Court against Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, who allegedly threatened insurance firms and banks to cut off their connections to the organization six years ago. The NRA claimed that in a 2018 meeting with Lloyd's, a large insurance company, Vullo promised to not prosecute other violations if the company helped campaign for gun control. In New York, third-party insurance policies that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs for firearm use that are sold through the NRA are illegal. Vullo said her enforcement was in an attempt to stop those policies. Caroline Fredrickson, a Georgetown Law professor, told CNN, “The worry is we don’t necessarily want to allow state governments to start using this kind of regulatory force to engage in a kind of third-party pressuring. On the other hand, you don’t want to restrict regulators from being able to have any impact on who an insurance company … is insuring.” The NRA is citing a 1963 Supreme Court precedent, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, in which the threat to refer book distributors to the police if they sold inappropriate books was ruled unconstitutional. Vullo argued that if insurance companies stopped working with the NRA, it would be of their own free will, since this was right after a mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 students and staff. "If reputational risk is a real thing, and if gun companies or gun advocacy groups impose that kind of reputational risk, isn't it a bank regulator's job to point that out?" said Justice Elena Kagan. Unexpectedly, the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented the NRA. They released an explanatory statement that read, "Some may have wondered why the ACLU was representing the NRA, since the ACLU clearly opposes the NRA on gun control and the role of firearms in society. In fact, we abhor many of the group’s goals, strategies, and tactics. So, the reality that we have joined forces, notwithstanding those disagreements, reflects the importance of the First Amendment principles at stake in this case." ACLU legal director David Cole said that if regulators can threaten the NRA, they'd be able to threaten the ACLU or other organizations. "The principal issue at stake in this case is one in which the ACLU deeply believes: preventing government blacklists of advocacy groups," Cole wrote. While a district court allowed the First Amendment arguments to move forward, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that and ruled that Vullo did not use coercion and was entitled to qualified immunity. The court's decision is expected to come out by the end of June.  

That's the news for today! Stay safe!