A judge ruled today against New York Attorney General Letitia James’s request that the National Rifle Association be dissolved following claims of fraudulent use of funds, while still allowing her office to go forward in pursuing various other remedies for the alleged misconduct. The judge said dissolution of the NRA “could impinge, at least indirectly, on the free speech and assembly rights of its millions of members.” That’s exactly what I argued when James’s office filed the action.
Justice Joel Cohen of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan — a trial-level court, notwithstanding the nomenclature — noted that James’s
allegations concern primarily private harm to the NRA and its members and donors, which if proven can be addressed by the targeted, less intrusive relief she seeks through other claims in her Complaint. The Complaint does not allege that any financial misconduct benefited the NRA, or that the NRA exists primarily to carry out such activity, or that the NRA is incapable of continuing its legitimate activities on behalf of its millions of members.… [State-imposed dissolution] should be the last option, not the first.
Exactly so. As I wrote then,
Had she contented herself with seeking such lesser but potent sanctions as restitution of ill‐gotten money and court orders barring wrongdoers from managing non‐profits in the future, few outside NRA circles would pay much heed. (The case is not a criminal prosecution.)
Instead James grabbed nationwide headlines by asking the court to dissolve the nation’s best‐known gun rights organization in its entirety. Some of those praising her action were openly gleeful at the prospect that government action might shut down what is, from their perspective, a major opposition political group.…
[The demanded remedy] is hostile toward the wishes and interests of the group most directly harmed by the self‐dealing, donors who wanted a maximally effective Second Amendment advocacy group and (if the allegations are true) were cheated of that.
There’s all the difference in the world between dropping a legal anvil on NRA insiders because you want to vindicate the interests of the organization’s donors and members, and demanding the group’s dissolution precisely because you don’t.… Whatever the implications for the Second Amendment, perhaps the greater danger here is to the First.
The New York Attorney General, as a matter of fact, is charged with the regulation of charitable nonprofits in large part because lawmakers sought to vindicate, not foil, donors’ interests in the causes they hoped to advance. “I suspect the judiciary will be unlikely to go along with James’s dissolution demand,” I predicted then. Today’s decision is a victory for liberty and the rule of law and a reproach to politically minded enforcement.
