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Notes -
NRA + ACLU
The ACLU reports:
[previous discussion here]
For a tl;dr of the background: the New York Department of Financial Services pressured several licensed insurance agencies in the state of New York from working with the NRA, citing new interpretations of rules regarding affinity programs, and allegedly while promising during backroom meetings that the DFS would allow quiet and easy remediation programs if the companies would assist. Companies that didn't jump onboard quickly received steep fines; those that showed hesitation felt fear for their license to operate as insurers. The NRA sued, and lower courts have largely allowed all responsible parties to claim various immunity, or argued that the behavior even if true would not be unlawful.
While that twitter thread doesn't go into much of the minutiae, and there's nothing I can find on the ACLU's website, the NRA's lawyers report that the ACLU will be acting as co-counsel. This has not been without controversy just from other CLUs; the third-party complaints tend toward the hilarious. So in that sense, it's a costly signal in a way that weak-kneed amici are not -- and while I'm not optimistic about this case, it's not in that ugly spot where the ACLU's presence has no chance of impact, either.
That said, it's not clear how much this case will matter for its specific actors, even if the NRA wins at SCOTUS. Vullo and New York State and all the king's horses won't be able to put the NRA's finances back together again. It's been self-insured in an increasingly lawsuit-optimized world for years already, and that's not gonna change even if Vullo takes a hit for the team. While Cuomo takes too much credit given the internal problems already plaguing the gun group, this is exactly the type of lawsuit where 'victory' means legal fees, a token financial punishment, and a promise that the bad actors won't commit the same mistakes where they could be caught. It won't even touch the current efforts to go after bank and merchant services (also, coincidentally, a group that falls under NYDFS purview!). A victory before SCOTUS might help reduce the risk of the organization's other New York and DC lawsuits from hollowing out the leadership and wearing the infrastructure like a skin suit, but we won't see the NRA be a cultural or legal force worth mentioning again in the next decade, if not my lifetime.
But a more general precedent might matter, if it could stick. For example:
FCC v. Starlink
FCC commissioner Brendan Carr writes:
context.
SpaceX and its subsidiaries have received a lot of unusual scrutiny in recent years, but most of it could at least motion around textual (if not necessarily even-handed or reasonable) interpretation of well-established regulation. Contract challenges aren't unusual, sometimes even not wrong.
Here, there seems to be little, if any, fig leaf: the king is just naked.
It's not absolutely certain that SpaceX will be able to achieve the RDOF grant requirements, and indeed the average StarLink connection today is closer to 80/10 than the 100/20 for the target (though I don't know if RDOF grantees might be focused toward the higher end of the scale). But it's far from "not reasonably capable", not least of all because the company already supports 1.3 million customers at those rates, rather than the 650k in the RDOF grant. While total capacity doesn't reallocate cleanly, the company is clearly capable of achieving scale, and on schedule to continue doing so. And Carr's complaint that this evaluation is not standard rings a sharper tone. Even after a grant is completed it's not unusual for grantees to sputter without so much as an FCC complaint. Completely revoking a grant partway-through, without much clearer evidence of non-performance or outright fraud, is an entirely different matter entirely.
I've mixed feelings about the rural internet upgrade programs and grants, even as an (indirect, non-Starlink) beneficiary, but Simington's dissental is damning in a different way : "What good is an agreement to build out service by 2025 if the FCC can, on a whim, hold you to it in 2022 instead?" Simington does not give the same focus on political bias that Carr does, but in many ways the problem is more damning when considered in that frame. Starlink has committed to massive infrastructure build-out and contracted with hundreds of thousands of consumers on the basis of doing a job, and consumers have worked with the company under market conditions of doing that job.
If you genuinely believed that the FCC was just being arbitrary to the scale of almost a billion dollars, rather than 'just' trying to hammer a political dissident at the President's not-very-indirect orders, that's actually pretty bad too! I just don't see many plausible ways for that to be the case.
New Mexico Carry Bans
[previous discussion).
Ping pong, hope no one ends up with an arrest record because the courts are fucking around. The public park carry isn't as extreme as the original county-wide ban, but it's still a clear violation of the dicta in Bruen, especially in a state like New Mexico. Doesn't really matter much if you can play with the court system long enough to fuck over anyone who wants to challenge a bad regulation, though.
More deeply, there's been no serious repercussions for it. During the warm-up for the upcoming legislative session, there's been more progress on an assault weapons ban than any serious rejoinder to Grisham's adventurism. The federal censure went nowhere. Citizen grand juries ditto.
Illinois v. Due Process
Speaking of the force of law being applied in random ways, Illinois just had a hearing on its Assault Weapon law. This law requires all guns in certain classes owned by certain people to be registered with the state, deadline January 1st, after which the registry closes. New ownership, or possession of an unregistered assault weapon, after that point will be a serious felony. What does it ban?
That is, not only is the rule arbitrary and vague, it's intended to be arbitrary and vague, able to change with little notice or opportunity to register newly-banned guns. And, indeed, the current rules are in limbo and will not be finalized before January 16th at their earliest.
There's at least some comedy in the court filings (do you know what a grenade launcher is? Because the state of Illinois doesn't think you do). But while the state managed to get a unlucky draw at the district level, this didn't last very long after appeal. And the basic problem that "When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril" remains, with little recognition or response from the normal set, and a long and successful campaign to splinter the groups devoted to this topic.
There was a separate and more specific hearing on vagueness yesterday, after the 'new' rules failed their last chance to get passed before Jan 16th, and perhaps we'll get an answer there before January 1st, but it didn't sound during arguments like a pause was likely. And, of course, some people will register between now and the decision's release.
How many? Uhhhh.
Maybe this would be a good reinforcement of @HlynkaCG and "refuse to be ruled", but at the risk of paraphrasing a bad Dilbert strip, perhaps for your first felony you should pick something that hasn't given the police your home address and a reason to think you specifically dangerous. Illinois' various laws don't quite amount to sending the state the exact make and model of every gun purchase (though they do for recent 'private' transactions), but it's mostly just a matter of convenience at this time.
The Supreme Court, and conservatives in general, do not want people to have gun rights. They want to make an abstract legal point about the Constitution, but they'd be horrified if it had any practical effect. "Sure, you have the right to keep and bear arms. But what makes you think that means you can carry a GUN?"
I have a lot of gun-owning conservatives in my social circle, and this sentiment is completely off-base, IME. Can you substantiate it?
You can look at the court cases. Bruen has changed nothing, and the only follow-up case the Supreme Court has taken (Rahimi) is one where their action can only LIMIT Bruen. In real life if you talk to "conservatives" who aren't hoplophobes about it, they tell you it's no problem to jump through the hoops the state has set up and you should just do it. If you point out that there's some reason you can't, they switch to saying maybe you just shouldn't have a gun.
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