First Amendment: SCOTUS Greenlights Lawsuit Against NY State for Allegedly Censoring NRA Advocacy Through Regulatory Coercion
Supreme Court: the firearms-advocacy group “plausibly alleged” a First Amendment violation after the state alleged coerced insurance companies into not doing business with the NRA
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a lawsuit against a New York State insurance regulator can proceed.
The NRA lawsuit accuses the regulator of violating the First Amendment by coercing insurance companies not to do business with the gun advocacy group.
In 2018, the trial court allowed the lawsuit to proceed, as Legal Insurrection reported, but an appeals court reversed, finding the regulator engaged in government speech, not coercion. The NRA then appealed to the Supreme Court.
The NRA alleged the regulator told insurers it was “less interested in pursuing” enforcement actions against insurers who did not do business with the NRA and other gun advocacy groups.
The Court rejected the state’s argument that the regulator engaged in government speech immune to the First Amendment while pursuing “legitimate enforcement action.”
The Court acknowledged that the government is free to adopt a viewpoint and attempt to persuade others when pursuing its favored policy. The Court, however, distinguished persuasion from coercion, when the government “relies on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion . . . to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech.”
The Court held that the appeals court, which earlier found for the government, failed to consider all the factors necessary to determine whether the government engaged in coercion. The Court noted that these factors include the regulator’s authority and communications and the insurance company’s reaction to those communications.
The Court remanded the case to the appeals court for further consideration, including “whether Vullo is entitled to qualified immunity.”
The case stems from a 2018 meeting between the New York Department of Financial Services superintendent Maria Vullo and “senior executives at Lloyd’s,” an insurance company that underwrote NRA-sponsored insurance policies.
Vullo’s office had previously discovered an NRA-sponsored insurance policy that violated state law by covering intentional criminal acts. Lloyd’s ceased underwriting this policy before the 2018 meeting.
At the 2018 meeting, Vullo expressed her support for gun control and implied her office would be less likely to investigate insurance companies that “ceased providing insurance to gun groups, especially the NRA.”
Vullo then provided letters to insurers titled “Guidance on Risk Management Relating to the NRA and Similar Gun Promotion Organizations.”
The letters encouraged insurance companies to evaluate risks associated with “dealings with the NRA,” to “review any relationships they have with the NRA,” and to “take prompt actions to manag[e] these risks and promote public health and safety.”
A joint press release with then-Governor Cuomo encouraged insurance companies to cease doing business with the NRA.
The opinion:
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
A unanimous finding is quite telling. Even the lefty justices couldn’t support this NY garbage.
While there’s a lot in the decision that’s a great restatement of the law, I’m not so sure we can celebrate just yet.
Read the final footnote in the decision. Is Sotomajor dog-whistling to the Second Circuit that they can still just nuke the case on qualified immunity grounds?
Probably telling them to use Washington state lawyers.
The bar exam will no longer be required to become a lawyer in Washington, the state Supreme Court ruled in a pair of orders Friday.
The court approved alternative ways to show competency and earn a law license after appointing a task force to examine the issue in 2020.
The Bar Licensure Task Force found that the traditional exam “disproportionally and unnecessarily blocks” marginalized groups from becoming practicing attorneys and is “at best minimally effective” for ensuring competency, according to a news release from the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts.
Washington is the second state to not require the bar exam, following Oregon, which implemented the change at the start of this year. Other states, including Minnesota, Nevada, South Dakota and Utah, are examining alternative pathways to licensure.
Which will result in more litigation when incompetent “council” are sued by their clients. Or loose the case due to their lack of skill/ knowledge. Smart firms will pass on those “attorneys”.
A superb first step.
The second step will be prosecuting the FEDERAL tyrants responsible for Chokepoint I and Chokepoint II.
The NRA was founded back in the day when the State of New York was part of the USA. I haven’t heard their governor come out with the same phrase of Newsom’s that “New York is a Nation State”..yet. Maybe “The Union of Soviet Socialist States of North America.” Catchy.
as we know the lefty doesnt care about freedoms for good people
only their criminals to keep others living in fear
tribalism!
10 AGs (Dem) have requested a federal probe into Texas pardoning the guy that killed an “assault-style” rifle carrying BLM protestor. (Note: We can play the amped up rifle description ala Alinsky Rules). Now I wonder who got them together on the same conference phone call and who instructed them to do this?
Up to 14. I wonder if anyone is going to remind them about stones and glass houses.
it was “funny” that in many media reports they refused to use that term…”assault” style when it was their boy carrying that weapon
Texas shouldn’t cooperate. State governors have the authority to pardon, and it’s unreviewable.
Should the Biden administration decide to go down the alleged civil rights violation path there’s no way the State of Texas will cooperate beyond delivery of any legitimately subpoenaed materials (should there be any), etc. The pardon followed the legal process in Texas with the Board of Pardons and Paroles considering the issue of pardon and delivering the recommendation to Governor Abbott (the Texas Governor can’t unilaterally pardon without the Board’s recommendation).
Exactly. They’d have to go after all the members of the Pardons and Parole Boards AND the guv. And exactly what would the federal law violation be (not that the left cares about things like due process) for acting 100% in accordance with the policies and procedures of state law?
Part of me would like to see the DoJ says this is an appropriate federal inquiry. It won’t work, and it will cause a huge backlash against Dems in Texas.
But it also would set a precedent that, say, it is therefore appropriate to bring federal investigations of Soros DA’s for violating the actual rights of citizens by deliberately refusing to prosecute various crimes / classes of criminals, with the Tides Foundations and other Soros entities named as co-conspirators. (Imagine the CX of Garland by Cruz and Kennedy raising this.)
This is all nonsense. Nobody has suggested that the pardon should be investigated. There’s no potential federal crime there.
But Perry may or may not have committed a federal crime, and they want DOJ to look into it and decide whether to charge him. Just like any other federal criminal investigation.
No, they haven’t. They’ve requested a federal probe into the shooting, to determine whether Perry committed a federal crime and should be charged with one. The pardon is none of the feds’ business and they’re not suggesting it is.
I’m glad the civil case is moving forward. BUT, what employees of the state of NY have done should be a CRIME, not just civilly actionable. When officers of the state exert their authority to purposefully – with intent – violate a person’s or a group of people’s civil rights, that should be a crime.
I can’t believe if this were a few people in the state of Alabama conspiring with regulated businesses to undermine the civil rights of blacks, the DOJ Criminal Division wouldn’t be over that case like white on rice. OF COURSE it would prosecute that as a crime.
Many of our government officials and agencies don’t seem to understand that if government action results in injury to fundamental rights, that’s unconstitutional. It doesn’t matter how it’s dressed up, no constitutional process can have an unconstitutional result. The result defines the process.
If it’s a crime, who should prosecute it? The state AG?! Or the Garland DOJ?!
Contemporary, vile Dhimmi-crats resemble nothing so much as callous, lawless and arrogant apparatchiks from Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China,
A good ruling that fits well within the law. A state official cannot use the law to discriminate against a legal organization selling a legal product — in this case, liability insurance. If Ms. Vullo had found a legitimate problem with the insurance (and in this case, re-insurance from Lloyds) that could have been adjudicated per usual procedures. But she decided that her ideology trumped (as it were), and now she’s been told that she’s wrong.
Not that Ms. Vullo will learn — progressives are repeatedly willing to burn their hands on the hot stove.
Imagine the Communist tyrants doing something so egregious that even the lefties on the Court couldn’t close their eyes to it
kentaji explained
we need to have as many guns legal as possible so as the criminals continue to maim the country we can have the people get soooo fed up that they ban all the weapons