The Los Angeles City Council today voted to formally repeal a controversial city ordinance requiring contractors seeking to do business with the city to disclose ties to the National Rifle Association (NRA). The decision is another legal victory for the Association, which argued that the ordinance violated its First Amendment right to free speech in court and won an injunction blocking the law.

“The same City officials who vowed to defend this ordinance are on the run,” said Jason Ouimet, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “In addition to the NRA members they wronged, city officials must now answer to voters and taxpayers for their failed experiment, and explain why they recklessly subjected the city to legal and financial exposure.”

Initially approved on February 12, 2019, City Ordinance No 186000 took effect on April 1, 2019. The NRA filed suit against the city on April 24, 2019. The NRA argued that the ordinance would unjustly cut off “revenue streams necessary for the NRA to continue engaging in protected speech and association” by discouraging membership and stigmatizing business relationships and sponsorships.

The Court agreed. On December 11, 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the ordinance, stating that the NRA was likely to show that the law violated its rights and would cause irreparable harm. Read more

New Jersey officials prematurely declared victory in press releases very early in the case, when the lowest federal court declined to hear it. On appeal to the Third Circuit (middle-level federal appeals court), NJ urged the court to dismiss that appeal as well, but the court has now refused. That means that the appeal will proceed, and New Jersey will be forced to defend its unconstitutional law on appeal.

Contact: Alan Gottlieb (425) 454-7012

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today cheered the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to move forward with a case that challenges a New York City gun law that was so restrictive the city amended it, and then tried to get the high court to dismiss the case.

“We’re delighted that the Supreme Court will move this important case forward,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an amicus brief in support of overturning this egregious attempt to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. We are confident that the high court will ultimately rule in favor of Second Amendment rights.”

The city scrambled to change the law once the court decided to accept the case for review earlier this year. The challenge is brought by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.

“It’s outrageous that the city has furiously tried to derail this case by changing the law,” Gottlieb stated. “That says volumes not only about the city’s fear of having to defend their restrictive gun control law before the court, but it also suggests to us that the city knew all along their law would not pass the constitutional smell test under any level of scrutiny, and they panicked.

“New York, and other state and local governments, have been getting away with adopting ridiculously oppressive gun regulations because lower courts have thumbed their noses at previous Supreme Court rulings in favor of the Second Amendment,” he added.

“Equally outrageous, if not more so,” Gottlieb observed, “was the attempt by Capitol Hill Democrats led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to bully the high court by filing a brief to dismiss the case or face the possibility that Democrats would pack the court. How dare Whitehouse and his associates attempt such coercion. We’re proud of the Supreme Court justices for ignoring this threat to their independence as a separate branch of government.

“The Democrats’ political demagoguery obviously backfired, and rightly so,” he said. “It just might cost them in November 2020.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.