General Counsel for Advancing American Freedom, J. Marc Wheat, released the following statement:
“Today the Supreme Court unanimously ruled for the National Rifle Association (NRA) in its challenge to New York’s effort to punish it by proxy, finding that the NRA’s case was wrongly dismissed by the lower courts. In January, Advancing American Freedom filed an amicus brief with 34 other groups in defense of insurance companies’ freedom of association on which New York’s Department of Financial Services trampled when it investigated insurance programs offered by the NRA through insurance companies, and called on those companies to discontinue their arrangements with the NRA. We argued that the government cannot accomplish by proxy what it cannot accomplish directly. It cannot censor or punish a speaker or entity like the NRA by punishing third party organizations like insurance companies who dare to associate with the speaker who is disfavored by the government. AAF and its fellow amici made similar arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, the Court’s decision in which can be expected sometime in the next several weeks. We hope to see a similar ruling in that case which challenged the current administration’s pressure campaign against social media companies to silence speech about the COVID pandemic.”
