The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a First Amendment case stemming from a New York official’s pressuring banks not to do business with the National Rifle Association (NRA).
In NRA v. Vullo, the justices will consider whether the First Amendment allows “a government regulator to threaten regulated entities with adverse regulatory actions” for doing business with a controversial speaker. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the NRA’s lawsuit in 2020, finding that it failed to prove former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services Maria Vullo “crossed the line between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce.”
“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 petition, adding that the “public importance of this case cannot be overstated.”
Vullo employed “backchannel threats, ominous guidance letters, and selective enforcement of regulatory infractions” to “induce banks and insurance companies to avoid doing business with” the NRA, according to the petition.
The NRA filed its initial lawsuit in 2018.
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