The NRA Strikes Back

One of America’s most venerable civil rights groups, a defender of the Second Amendment, will argue before the Supreme Court that New York violated its rights under the First Amendment.

AP/Frank Franklin II, file
Governor Andrew Cuomo, right, and Attorney General Letitia James, left, at the time the public advocate, at New York in 2014. AP/Frank Franklin II, file

Did New York State try a kind of backdoor censorship of the National Rifle Association because of its defense of the Second Amendment? The NRA, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, will be arguing that question at the Supreme Court, after losing in the Second Circuit. The First Amendment dispute comes on the heels of the NRA’s victory in New York after Attorney General Letitia failed to dissolve the venerable civil rights group. 

The NRA contends that Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed a New York State regulatory official, Maria Vullo, “to use the regulatory power” of the state’s financial services department to “financially blacklist” the group. The department, the NRA says, was “coercing banks and insurers to cut ties” with the group “to suppress its pro-Second Amendment speech.” The whole scheme was “meant to silence the NRA,” the group reckons.

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