June 1, 2024 - Epoch Times
11:02
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| Time | Text |
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| In a unanimous ruling delivered just yesterday, the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NRA, and in so doing, they delivered a major victory to the largest gun rights group in America. | |
| And actually, though, the implications of this ruling go far beyond the Second Amendment, and instead, they protect all Americans' First Amendment rights from being curtailed by government bureaucrats. | |
| However, in order to understand why that is, let's go through the details of this case together, right after you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons so that this content can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| Now, shortly after the Parkland High School shooting took place back in the year 2018, Democrat politicians across the country began using it as an impetus to place greater restrictions on gun rights, as well as to weaken organizations that represented the Second Amendment. | |
| And along that line, you had this woman right here, Ms. | |
| Maria Volo. | |
| She was, at that time, the superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, otherwise known as the DFS. | |
| And the New York DFS is a rather powerful organization, given the fact that, quote, any company that provides a financial or credit service in New York, from Wall Street banks to investment advisors and even guarantors of contracted work, comes under the regulatory watch of the New York State Department of Financial Services, or the DFS. | |
| Essentially, Ms. | |
| Volo worked underneath Governor Andrew Cuomo as his chief financial regulator. | |
| And so, in the year 2018, as the superintendent of this regulatory body, Ms. | |
| Volo began to pressure companies into no longer doing business with the NRA. | |
| Quote, Maria Volo leveraged her regulatory power over banks and insurance companies to coerce them into denying basic financial services to the NRA and, in Volo's own words, other gun promotion groups. | |
| Openly claiming that she sought to penalize the NRA because she disapproved of its political advocacy, the NRA alleged that Volo made good on those threats by issuing formal guidance to every bank and every insurance company in New York urging them to sever ties with the NRA, promising lenience to certain insurers if they would stop doing business with the NRA, and imposing consent orders that require the group's three principal affinity insurance providers never to provide such insurance to the NRA again. | |
| Likewise, on top of that, you had both Ms. | |
| Volo as well as Andrew Cuomo, who was at the time the governor of New York, issuing joint press releases which essentially echoed in public many of the points that the letters to the banks were saying in private. | |
| Quote, "Volo and Governor Cuomo also issued a joint press release echoing many of the letter's statements and urging all insurance companies and banks doing business in New York to join those that have already discontinued their arrangements with the NRA." Essentially, using both carrots as well as sticks, threats as well as leniency, Ms. | |
| Volo was attempting to use her position atop the agency to essentially blacklist the NRA as an organization because she disagreed with her advocacy work. | |
| And it worked, given the fact that banks and insurance companies began to cut ties with the NRA. | |
| This tactic is often referred to as jawboning, which is quote, informal pressure by the government on an intermediary to take certain actions that will suppress speech. | |
| Now because of this pressure, the NRA filed a lawsuit against Ms. | |
| Volo, as well as Andrew Cuomo, claiming that she was using her government position to stifle their First Amendment rights. | |
| The central claim of their lawsuit was that Ms. | |
| Volo, quote, privately threatened insurers with enforcement action if they maintained their relationship with the advocacy group and created a system of informal censorship that was designed to suppress its speech in violation of the First Amendment. | |
| Now, pretty much as soon as the lawsuit was filed, Ms. | |
| Volo attempted to have the entire case dismissed, making the argument, among other things, that she was shielded from the lawsuit under the doctrine of qualified immunity. | |
| Now, at the level of the district court, that argument was dismissed. | |
| Instead, the NRA won on this point when the district court, they found that, quote, However, that decision was appealed to the appellate level, who actually reversed the decision and ruled in favor of misfunding. | |
| Volo, determining that quote, Essentially, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that Ms. | |
| Volo did not cross that line into coercion. | |
| However, the NRA appealed that decision again to the U.S. | |
| or coercive, since they were written in an even-handed, non-threatening tone and used words intended to persuade, not intimidate." Essentially, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that Ms. Volo did not cross that line into coercion. | |
| However, the NRA appealed that decision again to the U.S. Supreme Court, and interestingly, in so doing, they gained an unexpected ally: the ACLU. | |
| Indeed, in a strange twist of fate, the ACLU filed an opening brief on behalf of the NRA, arguing that the state of New York did indeed violate the First Amendment rights with their actions. | |
| Their rationale for joining the case was as follows, quote, If government officials can pressure the businesses they regulate to blacklist the NRA in New York, then officials in other states can punish other advocacy organizations in the same way, including the ACLU itself. | |
| And so, after hearing the arguments from both sides, just yesterday, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9-0 ruling in favor of the NRA. | |
| Writing for the majority of the court, here is what Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. | |
| Quote, Then you had Justice Sotomayor reference an earlier Supreme Then you had Justice Sotomayor reference an earlier Supreme | |
| Court decision from the year in 1963, wherein in that case the state of Rhode Island was found to have been engaging in censorship when they were sending notices to a company called Bantam Books, which was a distributor of blacklisted publications. | |
| And referencing that earlier case from 1963, here is what Justice Sotomayor wrote. | |
| Quote, She then concluded by writing that Ms. | |
| Volo was free to criticize the NRA, as well as to pursue any actual violations of New York state insurance law, but, quote, she could not wield her power, however, to threaten enforcement actions against DFS-regulated entities in order to punish or suppress the NRA's gun promotion advocacy. | |
| Because the complaint plausibly alleges that Volo did just that, the court holds that the NRA stated a First Amendment violation. | |
| And as such, the court ruled in favor of the NRA finding that there is a possible First Amendment violation here and that the lawsuit can proceed. | |
| Because again, remember, that this whole legal action is a result of Ms. | |
| Volo as well as Andrew Cuomo trying to dismiss the lawsuit. | |
| However, the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court, they ruled that there is a real First Amendment claim here and that the lawsuit cannot be dismissed. | |
| And as such, the case now goes back down to the lower court where it can actually proceed. | |
| And the implications here are huge. | |
| This ruling, it reinforces the First Amendment and it strengthens the protections of all U.S. | |
| citizens from having the government coerce them in a roundabout way by influencing private institutions. | |
| And interestingly, it's worth mentioning that this case with the NRA was heard in the Supreme Court on the very same day that another case called Murthy v. Missouri was also heard. | |
| NRA vs Volo was heard on the same day as the Biden administration was defending its communications, which were pressuring social media giants in their moderation of content related to COVID-19 and the 2020 election. | |
| The decision in that case, Murphy vs Missouri, has yet to be released. | |
| All right, just a pause here for a super quick moment. | |
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| And so this win on the part of the NRA might just be a precursor for the Murthy case, which is questioning whether having the U.S. | |
| government pressure social media companies to censor American free speech is also a violation of the First Amendment. | |
| And while, of course, the details of the two cases differ, the NRA case and the social media case, well, the principle is the same. | |
| Can the government pressure private companies to do something that the government itself cannot? | |
| We'll just have to wait and see how that case is ruled on. | |
| Until then, though, as you would imagine, the NRA was quite pleased with the ruling in their case, with their lawyer releasing a statement following the ruling saying the following, quote, This is a landmark victory for the NRA and all who care about our First Amendment freedom. | |
| The opinion confirms what the NRA has known all along. | |
| New York government officials abused the power of their office to silence a political enemy. | |
| This is a victory for the NRA's millions of members and the freedoms that define America. | |
| Likewise, you had the ACLU release a statement of their own saying the following, quote, And so, there you have it. there you have it. | |
| If you'd like to read the full decision from the U.S. | |
| Supreme Court, I'll throw the link to that PDF version of that full ruling. | |
| You can find it down in the description box below, which is, again, that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, which, if you haven't already, I hope you take a super quick moment to smash. | |
| And then lastly, if you enjoyed today's content and you're just thinking to yourself, man, I love this content, I just wish Romo would publish more episodes every single week. | |
| Well, you're in luck, because I do. | |
| Over on EpicTV, our awesome no-censorship video platform, I publish anywhere between one to three exclusive episodes of Facts Matter every single week. | |
| Usually on topics that are too spicy for here on YouTube. | |
| And so if you'd like some extra episodes of Facts Matter every week, including a huge backlog from the last three years, the link is right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| Hope you're clicking it. | |
| Hope that you subscribe to The Epoch Times and join us over on our no censorship video platform. | |
| Until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times. | |
| Stay informed. |
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