UNANIMOUS SCOTUS Decision Gives NRA Big Win

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has been through the wringer over the last few years between internal volatility and numerous legal issues. It would be a full-time job just keeping up with all of it.

To be fair, it’s possible that some of the NRA’s challenges have been self-inflicted, especially the internal strife.

Having said that, though, most, if not all, of the court cases are due to anti-2A zealots having a vendetta against the NRA and not with any actual wrongdoing on the part of the NRA. The lawsuits have overwhelmingly been either hit jobs against the NRA or in response to other types of hit jobs against the NRA.

And it’s this second type of situation that we’re talking about today: a lawsuit filed by the NRA in response to a political hit job by the State of New York (of course) and an unexpected unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). And, yes, that means that even the liberal justices on the court sided with the NRA who was represented in the case by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which makes this entire case even more surprising. Carlos Garcia writes,

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that a free speech lawsuit from the National Rifle Association against a New York state official could move forward.

The ruling was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the liberal justices of the highest court in the land.

Sotomayor wrote that a New York state official had overstepped her bounds when she used the power of her office to try to dissuade companies against doing business with the NRA after the horrendous Parkland school shooting in 2018.

Garcia continues:

Sotomayor wrote that government officials were “free to criticize the N.R.A. and pursue the conceded violations of New York insurance law,” but that they could not constitutionally wield state power to “threaten enforcement actions” against companies they regulated in order to “punish or suppress the N.R.A.’s gun-promotion advocacy.”

She cited precedent, saying, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

Now, I won’t pretend that Justice Sotomayer, or either of the other two justices generally considered to be the liberal justices, would agree with me about anything else, but they definitely made the right decision here: government don’t have the right to use government power against organizations over a difference in policy position (and, yes, I would say that even if the organization in question held positions that I disagree with).

This is definitely a win for the NRA, and if justice is served in the court system, the State of New York should be crushed in the court cases that follows.