An NRA complaint that claimed a New York regulator had violated its First Amendment rights by pressing banks and insurers to quit doing business with the gun-rights organization was dismissed last week by a federal appeals court, according to Reuters.
The former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services (DFS), Maria Vullo, was found to have “stepped over the line between attempts to persuade and attempts to coerce,” according to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The NRA failed to establish this.
After the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school massacre, Vullo urged banks and insurers to take into account the “reputational risks” of doing business with gun-rights organizations. According to Reuters, Vullo later fined numerous insurance companies over $13 million for offering NRA-endorsed goods that New York deemed to be illegal. The NRA-backed products were withdrawn by the insurers.
In court records, it is stated that Vullo issued a press release encouraging “all insurance firms and financial institutions doing business in New York to join the corporations who have already stopped their arrangements with the NRA, and to take prompt efforts to control these risks and promote safety and health.”
After that, the NRA filed a lawsuit against Vullo, the DFS, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, claiming that the state’s actions will prevent it from accessing essential banking services and impair its capacity to further its objectives.
All of the NRA’s claims were rejected by a lower court judge, with the exception of two free speech allegations against Vullo. The appeals court, however, said in its most recent decision that all claims should be rejected.
“The court stated that even if the NRA had sufficiently alleged that Vullo had engaged in unconstitutionally coercive or threatening behavior, the law wasn’t even made abundantly clear and any First Amendment breaches would not have been obvious to a reasonable official at the moment, so the court still found that Vullo was entitled to qualified immunity. The factual allegations in the Complaint demonstrate that, far from behaving carelessly, Vullo was performing her duties in good faith… Therefore, even if the NRA’s claims of a First Amendment violation were plausible, Vullo would be shielded by qualified immunity in any case,” according to the court’s opinion.
The NRA may decide to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court.
William A. Brewer, an attorney for the NRA, claimed that “the Second Circuit’s ruling on the NRA’s allegations against Ms. Vullo misstates the facts and violates the First Amendment.” He claimed that the NRA is “exploring its options,” including petitioning the Supreme Court for certiorari.
