Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)

The Orange County (Calif.) Register on defending the First Amendment (June 6):

Americans differ on the meaning and interpreta­tion of the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.” But there’s almost complete agreement on a nearly absolute guarantee of the First Amendment right against the government “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

That First Amendment interpreta­tion was upheld May 30 by a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case National Rifle Associatio­n v. Vullo.

The respondent was Maria Vullo, the superinten­dent of the New York State Department of Financial Services from 20162019. The NRA charged she used her official capacity to, in the court’s summary, use “Dfs-regulated parties to punish or suppress the NRA’S gun-promotion advocacy.” Those suppressed specifical­ly included Lockton Companies, an insurance firm offering policies to NRA members.

In a “strange bedfellows” developmen­t, the case was taken up and litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union, most of whose members and contributo­rs would likely disagree with NRA members on most other issues. Likewise, the court’s majority opinion was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s more liberal members. Everyone involved agreed government attacks on free speech are not to be tolerated, and political disagreeme­nts are to be adjudicate­d not in courtrooms, but in the court of public opinion.

The court ruled Vullo coerced “regulated entities to terminate their business relationsh­ips with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy.” And, “viewpoint discrimina­tion is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.” It said Vullo was free to express her own opinions in public. But “she may not use the power of her office to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”

Aside from the specific First Amendment issue at hand, this also is a rebuke to the vast regulatory state that controls our lives at the federal, state and local levels. Government officials are tasked with performing certain functions and are prohibited from expanding those functions beyond the letter of the law. In particular, nothing in the Bill of Rights can be violated.

The ACLU insisted if New York State got away with this repression, “then officials in other states can punish other advocacy organizati­ons in the same way–including the ACLU itself.” Exactly. That would include California’s state government, with its own overreach problems.

Last Sept. 13, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threw out a California law banning gun ads that might influence minors. It ruled the state “presented no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad.”

Five days later, in a non-gun case, the First Amendment was upheld in the case of technology trade associatio­n Netchoice v. Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled that, although protecting children online “clearly is important,” the law’s provisions “do not pass constituti­onal muster.”

As free people tussle in the marketplac­e of ideas, they depend on free speech and media. May those freedoms always be upheld.