Supreme Court weighs NRA First Amend­ment dis­pute against New York reg­u­la­tor

The Supreme Court on Mon­day heard argu­ments over whether a New York offi­cial can be sued for vio­lat­ing the Nation­al Rifle Association‘s free speech rights by alleged­ly urg­ing banks and insur­ers to avoid doing busi­ness with the gun rights group.
Jus­tices heard the NRA’s argu­ments for its bid to revive a 2018 law­suit alleg­ing that Maria Vul­lo, a for­mer super­in­ten­dent of New York‘s Depart­ment of Finan­cial Ser­vices, ille­gal­ly retal­i­at­ed against the pro-Sec­ond Amend­ment group after the Park­land, Flori­da, high school mass shoot­ing that left 17 peo­ple dead.

Assault weapons and hand­guns are shown on dis­play. (AP Photo/Seth Perl­man, File)

At issue is whether Vul­lo used her reg­u­la­to­ry pow­er to force state finan­cial insti­tu­tions to cut off ties with the NRA in vio­la­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions. A major­i­ty of the court seemed inclined to favor the NRA’s posi­tion that the law­suit could be revived.
“How do …