The Worst of Andrew Cuomo

It might be too early to make an endorsement in New York City’s mayoral race. It’s not too early, though, to mark our principal concern about Andrew Cuomo, who has just declared. It’s the streak of bullying that erupted in his campaign to drive the National Rifle Association out of the Empire State. The Supreme Court called him out on it, in a unanimous decision written by the most liberal justice on the high bench, Sonia Sotomayor. The case, decided in May, is NRA v. Vullo. Maria Vullo was superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services under Mr. Cuomo. The justices held that the NRA had “plausibly alleged” what amounted to a form of back-door censorship, in that the DFS “violated the First Amendment by coercing regulated entities to terminate their business relationships with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.It was a shocking holding, involving government wrongly using its powers to suppress the activities of, in the NRA, the country’s largest and most distinguished civil rights organization. New York’s Department of Financial Services regulates insurance companies doing business in the state. The NRA contracted with entities that DFS regulates to administer insurance policies offered by the NRA to its members. Such insurance was carried by gun owners.It was, in effect, an attempt to “financially blacklist” the NRA, the gun rights group reckoned. Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor chastised Ms. Vullo — and, by extension, Mr. Cuomo — for this campaign. “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. Yet it appeared Ms. Vullo “did just that.”What makes the apparent censorship particularly insidious, the high court noted, was the fact that the campaign against the NRA took place behind closed doors. “Ultimately, the critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries,” Justice Sotomayor explained. If politics makes for strange bedfellows, the NRA being joined in the Vullo case by the American Civil Liberties Union marks one of the oddest such partnerships in recent memory. The ACLU hailed the court’s ruling as a reminder that “government officials have no business using their regulatory authority to blacklist disfavored political groups.” Ms. Vullo and Mr. Cuomo, the ACLU said, had “sought to punish” the NRA for its Second Amendment advocacy. Justice Sotomayor’s opinion sent the Vullo case back down to the Second Circuit, where the case is still pending. During oral arguments in November, a circuit judge, Denny Chin, zeroed in on concerns of Ms. Vullo’s “indirect coercion of speech” by way of “pushing the insurance companies not to do business that somehow deters the NRA from engaging fully in speech.” Ms. Vullo is seeking immunity for her actions under Mr. Cuomo.Ms. Vullo’s efforts to harm the NRA amounted to a kind of collaboration with Mr. Cuomo and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, the Second Amendment rights group contends. Ms. James went on to file a lawsuit against the NRA, averring she was “seeking to dissolve” the “largest and most influential pro-gun organization in the nation.” Yet Ms. James’ effort to shut down the NRA ended in failure.The circumstances that led up to the Vullo case are important not so much because the fate of the NRA is at top of mind for most New Yorkers but because of what the case discloses about Mr. Cuomo’s character. If Mr. Cuomo is willing to traduce the Second Amendment — “the true palladium of liberty,” as St. George Tucker put it — to advance his political agenda, who’s to say what other constitutional principles he would betray?_______________This editorial has been revised to state more clearly than in the bulldog what the Supreme Court held in NRA v. Vullo.

The Worst of Andrew Cuomo

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