NRA is going to win; BIG TIME. Lots of constitutional violations in the state law as well as interpretation.
Until a person is actually convicted, there is no crime. The only thing that will be left to decide are the damages.
Preliminary Statement in the Complaint:
This case is necessitated by an overt viewpoint-based discrimination campaign against the NRA and the millions of law-abiding gun owners that it represents. Directed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, this campaign involves selective prosecution, backroom exhortations, and public threatswith a singular goal – to deprive the NRA and its constituents of their First Amendment rights to speak freely about gun-related issues and defend the Second Amendment.
The foundation of Defendants’ selective-enforcement and retaliation campaign is a series of threats to financial institutions that DFS, an agency created to ensure the integrity of financial markets after the 2008 credit crisis, will exercise its extensive regulatory power against those entities that fail to sever ties with the NRA. To effect their sweeping agenda, Defendants issued public demands that put DFS-regulated institutions on notice to “discontinue[] their arrangements with the NRA” and other “gun promotion organizations” if they planned to do business in New York.
At the same time, Defendants engaged in back-channel communications to reinforce their intended purpose. Simply put, Defendants made it clear to banks and insurers that it is bad business in New York to do business with the NRA.
As a direct result of this coercion, multiple financial institutions have succumbed to Defendants’ demands and entered into consent orders with DFS that compel them to terminate longstanding, beneficial business relationships with the NRA, both in New York and elsewhere. Tellingly, several provisions in the orders bear no relation to any ostensible regulatory infraction. Moreover, Defendants’ abuses will imminently deprive the NRA of basic bank-depository services, corporate insurance coverage, and other financial services essential to the NRA’s corporate existence and its advocacy mission.
Absent injunctive relief, Defendants’ blacklisting campaign will continue to damage the NRA and its members, as well as endanger the free speech and association rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the United States and the State of New York. It is well-settled that viewpoint discrimination applied through “threat[s] of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion,persuasion, and intimidation” violates the United States Constitution where, as here, such measures chill protected First Amendment activities.1 Defendants’ de facto censorship scheme cannot survive judicial scrutiny. Nor should it.