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Notes -
The 2nd Circuit has ruled in NRA v. Vullo:
Most of the charges against the state and its direct actors had already been dismissed earlier, either under 11th Amendment or qualified immunity prongs. But this dismisses the last of them.
To summarize, the National Rifle Association alleged that the New York Department of Financial Services held backroom meetings where DFS told an insurance provider that, while aware of widespread violations of a specific law both among many insurers and for that specific provider, if the provider dropped gun-related clients, DFS would not bring claims against non-gun-related contracts. And Lloyd's did, demonstrably, drop the NRA, something the NRA argued in a still-partially-redacted-pleading in this case. And the NRA ended up needing to go with self-insurance, entirely coincidentally to any insurance company offering policies in the state falling under the NYDFS regulatory umbrella.
But the written settlement agreement provided to a court said that Lloyd's could still contract with the NRA. And DFS did issue a few (much-smaller) penalties against one or two other providers, after a lower court did not dismiss some of the claims in this case. So it's ok!
I should mention, to start, that this did get an amici brief from the ACLU. You could write this up as 'even the ACLU thought it was an infringement of rights', or you could write it up as principles overcoming politics (if, coincidentally, in a doomed case), or even just paranoid caution lest that whole "First they came for..." poem ring true. But not something that everyone did, and even many closer to the NRA's perspectives covered the case with less sincere analysis.
This is still in the motion to dismiss phase, two years in. At this phase, the courts are supposed to treat even remotely plausible factual claims in a pleading in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, and it's hard to read this decision as having actually done so. It's possible, if unlikely, for the NRA to appeal the case. But along with the difficulty of gaining evidence of some of the alleged specific claims (it's almost certain that the redacted parts of some affidavits include specific whistleblowers in DFS or a regulated insurance agency or agencies, and very likely that there were few enough people in those meetings to count without taking off one's shoes), this highlights both the cost and the low likelihood of success for not just this case, but this class of cases. This is not the sort of lawsuit your average LLC could afford to bring, and there are some adjacent attack surfaces that would beggar even many larger businesses in months if not weeks. The NRA could afford (insufficient) self-insurance and kept some of its normal practices going, but the writing is on the wall, and no small number of real-world programs and ranges have already begun the process of trying to build away or around its likely failure.
For another, because this is in the motion to dismiss phase, this isn't particularly useful as a truth-finding tool. It is entirely possible that the NRA's lawyer completely made up the alleged behavior. It's possible that the Department of Financial Services was actually having daily or hourly meetings threatening legal action unless regulated agents acted against disliked organizations. Indeed, a lot of the legal action on the docket revolved around staying early discovery. Which is necessary to prevent the use of the courts for harassment when bringing meritless charges... but means that the real answer is that the courts do not care.
They aren't meant to be mechanisms to resolve political disputes or find out the actual facts at controversy; at best, they settle a very small and specific subset of disputes, and the scope and limits of that process can be surprising.
Basically 2nd said it's OK for the government to condition prosecution on "correct" partisan-based behavior - i.e. "either you close accounts of all Republicans or we are going to audit your bank until the angels sound their trumpets and hound your mercilessly for every tiny paperwork violation like you're Al Capone". I can't really find words beyond "welcome to the Banana Republic of America" to react to this.
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