Brewer, Volokh Comment on First Amendment Case

November 26, 2024 – Firm Partner William A. Brewer and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh posted an update on the NRA’s First Amendment lawsuit against former New York financial regulator Maria T. Vullo. The report appears on REASON, as a segment of Professor Volokh’s blog, “The Volokh Conspiracy.”

In setting the stage for a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the two write, “We were joined by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as the NRA appealed this ruling to the United States Supreme Court for the NRA. In a rebuke from a unanimous Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor revived the NRA's claims this past June, emphasizing decades of precedent that "[a] government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf." Moreover, the Court said, Vullo's alleged conduct struck at the heart of this prohibition. In light of the Court's guidance on the First Amendment merits of the NRA's allegations, Sotomayor added, the Second Circuit was free to reconsider the issue of qualified immunity, i.e., whether Vullo's alleged violations were such that the NRA should be able to sue her individually for damages.”

Read the report here.

New York Law Journal Reports on NRA Cert Petition to SCOTUS

February 8, 2023 — The New York Law Journal reports that Brewer client the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider its suit against former New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo, "whom the gun-rights advocacy group accused of threatening insurers because they did business with the NRA."

According to the NRA, Vullo and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo engineered a 2018 “blacklisting campaign” against the NRA. The Association filed a lawsuit in May 2018, alleging the campaign was retaliation for the NRA’s viewpoint of speech. The State of New York filed a Motion to Dismiss, and, on November 6, 2018, U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy issued a highly-anticipated decision, which upheld the NRA’s First Amendment freedom-of-speech claims — the crux of its complaint. That decision was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on September 22, 2022.

The New York Law Journal notes that the petition for a writ of certiorari was signed by NRA's counsel, William Brewer III, and First Amendment scholar and law professor Eugene Volokh. Together, they argue that the Second Circuit’s opinion “gives state officials free rein to financially blacklist their political opponents—from gun-rights groups, to abortion-rights groups, to environmentalist groups, and beyond.”

“It also permits selective investigations and penalties targeting business arrangements with disfavored speakers, even where the regulator premises its hostility explicitly on an entity’s political speech and treats leniently, or exempts, identical transactions with customers who lack controversial views,” they wrote.

Brewer told the Journal that reversal of the Second Circuit’s ruling is “important not only to the NRA but all advocacy groups that rely upon the protections of the First Amendment.”