When the NRA petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case NRA v. Vullo, a case in which the state of New York clearly trampled on the First Amendment rights of the NRA, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) gathered 17 other states’ attorneys general together to write and submit a friend-of-the-court brief (otherwise known as an amicus brief) to the high court. The Supreme Court subsequently accepted the case.
The Montana-led brief begins by saying, “This case concerns troubling allegations of governmental abuse of power. As plausibly alleged, Maria Vullo, the head of New York’s Department of Financial Services (“DFS”), a state agency tasked with sweeping regulatory authority over financial institutions, leveraged her official authority to stifle the NRA’s constitutionally protected political speech.”
The important brief goes on to clearly and unequivocally show how the state of New York attacked the NRA’s First Amendment rights. The brief does this by citing a long history of Supreme Court precedents.
In doing so, Attorney General Knudsen authoritatively establishes how critical this case is to the future of American freedom. Here is Knudsen, in his own words, explaining why he has gotten behind the NRA on this case.
“Government should not be able to come in and act like the mafia,” says Attorney General Knudsen in this video interview. “And that’s really what this was. I mean you had Maria Vullo come in and act like a mobster and basically threaten companies for doing business with the NRA, and it wasn’t overt … . She never made any direct threats, but it was like a Tony Soprano situation. You know, ‘boy, that’s a nice business you have. It would be an awful shame if anything were to happen to it!’”
