The Supreme Court sided with the National Rifle Association on Thursday, finding that the group could pursue a First Amendment claim against a New York state official who had encouraged companies to stop doing business with it after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for a unanimous court, found that the N.R.A. had plausibly claimed a violation of the First Amendment, reversing an appeals court decision and sending the case back for further proceedings. Although a government official is allowed to “share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs,” she wrote, that official may not “use the power of the state to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”
The case is one of two this term in which the justices have wrestled with when government advocacy crosses a constitutional line into coercion.
The dispute centers on whether Maria T. Vullo, who was a superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, had infringed on the free speech rights of the N.R.A. After a young man killed 17 people in a shooting at a school in Parkland, Fla., Ms. Vullo told insurance companies and banks that they should consider whether to provide services to the group.
Although Ms. Vullo was “free to criticize the N.R.A. and pursue the conceded violations of New York insurance law,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, she was not allowed to “wield her power” to “threaten enforcement actions” against companies regulated by her department in a way that would “punish or suppress the N.R.A.’s gun-promotion advocacy.” The court’s decision was in keeping with previous rulings that “government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,” the justice added.
In a concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed “the important distinction between government coercion, on the one hand, and a violation of the First Amendment, on the other.” Coercion alone is not enough to violate the First Amendment, she wrote, adding that to determine whether the government has crossed a line, courts must assess how that coercion actually violates a speaker’s First Amendment rights.