Columbus, OH – On Tuesday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in National Rifle Association v. Vullo, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop government officials in New York from threatening—or “jawboning”—businesses that the state regulates from working with the National Rifle Association (NRA).

“New York’s ‘jawboning’ threats to Visa and other regulated businesses to stop working with the NRA are little better than mob boss tactics that violate the First Amendment and degrade our free speech protections,” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute. 

In this brief, The Buckeye Institute outlines America’s bipartisan history of jawboning and argues that New York officials themselves created the reputational risk that it used to justify blacklisting the NRA. Buckeye further contends that by threatening businesses it regulates, New York’s goal was to censor the NRA by proxy. As Andrew M. Grossman, a senior legal fellow at The Buckeye Institute, and David B. Rivkin Jr. wrote in The Wall Street Journal, New York’s “goal was to punish the NRA for its gun-rights advocacy.”

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