Earlier this year, the sharply divided Supreme Court came together to decide unanimously in favor of the National Rifle Association. The N.R.A., the justices ruled, could pursue its claim that a New York State regulator had infringed on its First Amendment rights when she sought to discourage insurers and banks from doing business with the gun group after the 2018 school massacre in Parkland, Fla.
The ruling was a coup for the N.R.A., mired in years of litigation, scandal and deepening financial woes. The gun group’s lawyer called it “a landmark victory for the N.R.A. and all who care about our First Amendment freedom,” while its board president wrote in a recent internal letter that “the N.R.A. is poised to collect nearly $100 million in damages.”
There is, however, a new wrinkle: The two women said to be the primary participants in a secret meeting described in the N.R.A. complaint, and pivotal to the Supreme Court ruling, say it never took place. While the veracity of the allegations has no bearing on the ruling, several legal experts said it could doom the N.R.A.’s lawsuit.
The case before the high court was a test of how far government advocacy could go before crossing a line into coercion. The court’s opinion, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said that while government officials could share “views freely and criticize particular beliefs,” they could not “use the power of the state to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”
The ruling drew on an account of the supposed secret meeting, detailed in the N.R.A.’s lawsuit, between Maria T. Vullo, New York’s top financial regulator at the time, and Inga Beale, then chief executive of Lloyd’s of London, as well as a Lloyd’s lawyer. In the opinion’s third paragraph, Justice Sotomayor wrote that “Vullo met with senior executives at Lloyd’s” on Feb. 27, 2018, and “expressed her views in favor of gun control.” Further, Ms. Vullo was said to have told the Lloyd’s chief that if the insurer “ceased providing insurance to gun groups, especially the N.R.A.,” regulators would become “less interested” in pursuing regulatory infractions involving Lloyd’s.
But in interviews and emails, both Ms. Vullo and Ms. Beale told The New York Times that they first met several months after the purported meeting, and then only at an industry awards luncheon where they exchanged pleasantries.
Ms. Beale, in an email, said “there was no such meeting” as described in the N.R.A.’s court papers. While officials from Ms. Vullo’s agency, the Department of Financial Services, ordinarily have dealings with large insurers, “I do not remember reports of any such meetings that included a threat of any sort,” Ms. Beale wrote.
Ms. Vullo, whose motion to dismiss the N.R.A.’s lawsuit propelled the case to the high court, said in an interview that her life had been roiled by threats inspired by the gun group’s narrative. “I’ve had to deal with six years of a litigation of lies,” she said. “I’ve had to deal with a Supreme Court decision that is premised on those lies and all of the public discussion of it, including statements that the N.R.A. and its counsel have made reinforcing those lies and fund-raising off of those lies. And that has affected my reputation.”
The N.R.A. stands by its assertions. The law firm of William A. Brewer III, which brought the case on the N.R.A.’s behalf, said in a statement that “a confidential Lloyd’s source” informed it of the meeting. The firm has relied on interviews with “individuals who are current or former employees of or agents of Lloyd’s,” one of its lawyers disclosed at a 2021 hearing.
“The N.R.A. stands by its claims that Vullo, at the direction of Cuomo, weaponized the power of her office to financially blacklist the N.R.A.,” said Bob Barr, a former congressman who is president of the N.R.A.’s board. He was referring to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who is also a defendant in the lawsuit.
The Lloyd’s lawyer who was said to have attended the meeting did not return calls for comment. Lloyd’s current management declined to comment.
In legal proceedings touching on constitutional issues, the underlying facts can take time to be adjudicated. Supreme Court rulings are often theoretical, taking a plaintiff’s claims at face value to opine on more fundamental questions. But this case has been underway for six years, and the N.R.A. and its lawyers have used it as a rhetorical cudgel to rally its members.
The confrontation between the N.R.A. and New York predates Parkland. The year before, in 2017, the state began cracking down on a lucrative insurance program called “Carry Guard” that the N.R.A. was offering to gun owners through affiliated insurers. Ms. Vullo saw it as providing illegal liability coverage for unlawful shootings, and the program was shut down.
Then, after a teenager murdered 17 people at a high school in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018, the state began to step up its rhetoric. That April, in a guidance letter to regulated entities, Ms. Vullo noted that several companies had “severed their ties with the N.R.A.” in the wake of Parkland. It further encouraged insurers “to continue evaluating and managing their risks, including reputational risks, that may arise from their dealings with the N.R.A.”
That August, Mr. Cuomo wrote on Twitter that “we’re forcing the N.R.A. into financial jeopardy. We won’t stop until we shut them down.”
The N.R.A. sued Ms. Vullo and the Department of Financial Services, as well as Mr. Cuomo, arguing that they had infringed on the group’s right “to speak freely about gun-related issues.”
The American Civil Liberties Union saw the N.R.A.’s case as a free-speech violation, and joined its legal effort after Ms. Vullo filed a motion to dismiss the claim, even before the case progressed to the discovery phase. It was an unusual partnership for two groups that typically agree on very little.
“The only question for the A.C.L.U., and indeed the only question for the courts, was do these facts as alleged state a claim under the First Amendment?” said David Cole, the former national legal director of the A.C.L.U., who argued the case before the Supreme Court. “There’ll be discovery. It might well be that Vullo will deny that the meeting happened. There will be a determination of whether that’s true or not.”
The A.C.L.U. did not vet the underlying complaint, but Stephen Gillers, an emeritus legal ethics professor at New York University, said the onus did not fall on the court or the A.C.L.U. to do that while wrestling over a motion to dismiss a case. Still, he noted that “the lawyers who wrote the complaint” have obligations under the federal rules of civil procedure “to have a factual basis for their allegations.”
“They are not guaranteeing what they are saying is true, but they can’t just wildly make allegations without a basis in fact,” he said.
Not everyone saw the A.C.L.U.’s involvement as benign. The groups’ state affiliate, the New York Civil Liberties Union, argued against taking part. Christopher Dunn, the N.Y.C.L.U.’s legal director, said in response to questions for this article that “we had concerns about the factual claims presented in the complaint, so the report that this critical meeting did not take place is no surprise.”
Mr. Cole said that the case was built around more than the meeting. “Vullo and Cuomo engaged in a whole course of conduct over many months that sought to punish the N.R.A. for its political views.”
But the meeting played a central role in the Supreme Court’s decision. It’s one thing to get a strongly worded bureaucratic letter; it would be another to have New York’s top financial regulator personally threaten retaliation. While the high court accepted the plaintiff’s assertion for the sake of argument, an eventual trial could pivot on determining the truth about the meeting.
“If the purported meeting never happened, the central allegation of the complaint disappears and there is a strong possibility the N.R.A.’s case crumbles altogether,” said Nick Suplina, a former senior adviser and special counsel at the New York attorney general’s office who now works for the gun control group Everytown.
During oral arguments in March, the Supreme Court justices wrestled with the question of how far is too far when public officials apply pressure. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said there would be “very clear coercion” if a government official threatened to use “legal weapons” when someone didn’t agree to suppress certain speech.
Justice Elena Kagan said she put the meeting “in a different category” than other issues raised. Even the Biden administration expressed unease. Ephraim McDowell, an assistant to the solicitor general, urged the justices “to hinge the First Amendment analysis on the Lloyd’s meeting, because that’s an explicit threat.”
The N.R.A. and its allies have suggested that those on the left should try to imagine officials in a red state facing off with Planned Parenthood. This recently became more than a mental exercise. In October, a federal judge in Florida blocked the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, from threatening to criminally prosecute television stations for airing an ad favoring abortion rights.
In his ruling, Judge Mark E. Walker of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee cited the Vullo case, writing that the Florida move “bears all the hallmarks of unconstitutional coercion” that the Supreme Court had identified. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” he added.
The N.R.A. case is now back in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, whose prior ruling dismissing the case was vacated by the Supreme Court. Ms. Vullo’s motion to dismiss is not dead yet; the appeals court must now decide on another argument of Ms. Vullo’s, whether her status as a public official gives her qualified immunity from litigation.
In arguments this month in the Second Circuit, Judge Susan L. Carney said “the Supreme Court seems to see” the meeting “as pivotal to the plausibility of the claim,” and wondered if the veracity of the matter should be resolved by a lower court before proceeding further. Ms. Vullo’s lawyer, Will Havemann, expressed a preference to first play out the motion to dismiss the case on the immunity question.
Ms. Vullo, for her part, said she had been well within her authority to make pronouncements about reputational risk.
“There was nothing in that guidance that threatened directly or indirectly any adverse consequences,” she said. “In managing financial institutions, you provide your thoughts on matters of risk, and this was a matter of risk,” she added.
The N.R.A. has used the First Amendment case to bolster its self-image as a leading civil rights organization. But years of trouble have diminished its political clout.
In January, Wayne LaPierre, its longtime chief executive, announced he was stepping down on the eve of a corruption case brought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and in February he was found liable for misspending $5.4 million in N.R.A. funds.
A management shake-up after Mr. LaPierre’s departure left the N.R.A.’s leadership in rival camps. Some have wanted to cut ties with the Brewer firm, which has been charging the N.R.A. tens of millions of dollars a year. Mr. Brewer is known as a particularly aggressive lawyer. After the N.R.A. turned to him in 2018, he sparked a schism with the group’s largest contractor, an Oklahoma advertising firm that happened to be run by his father-in-law.
While Mr. Brewer championed the First Amendment litigation, the gun group recently changed its counsel on the case to Noel Francisco, a lawyer at Jones Day who served as solicitor general in the first Trump administration. Mr. Francisco did not comment, but Mr. Brewer said, “We remain confident that the record will support the allegations in the complaint.”
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