Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is teaming up with 15 other states in support of a National Rifle Association lawsuit to stop the state of New York from dissolving the organization.
Schmidt was among 16 attorneys general who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case in which the NRA is challenging whether New York Attorney General Letitia James can shut down the organization.
“The extreme remedy sought by New York – dissolving the organization rather than reforming it – would burden the constitutional right of thousands of Kansans to associate with like-minded others to advocate for Second Amendment rights,” said John Milburn, spokesman for the attorney general
“New York’s approach is an overreaction fueled by politics, not by nonprofit law.”
Last summer, James brought a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court seeking to dissolve the NRA, accusing the organization of diverting millions of dollars from its charitable mission to personally benefit senior leadership.
James’ 169-page lawsuit also demands the removal Wayne LaPierre as CEO. The lawsuit claims that LaPierre and others used the NRA money to bankroll an opulent lifestyle.
The New York attorney general brought the lawsuit following an 18-month investigation into the NRA.
“The NRA’s influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets,” James said last August when the lawsuit was filed.
The NRA, which immediately countersued in federal court, says James’ litigation is a politically driven effort to “silence the NRA’s advocacy, and neutralize it as an opposing political force.”
The NRA argues that James promised during her campaign that she would “take down the NRA,” not by rebutting its policy positions or by advocating for gun control legislation, but by using the powers of the attorney general’s office.
“The NRA welcomes fair, full-throated policy debate, but cannot abide the opportunistic, corrupt misuse of government power by certain New York officials to squelch political opposition,” the organization argued.
Schmidt joined the brief backing the NRA, which was led by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge.
Other states joining the brief included Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Utah, Alaska, Mississippi and South Carolina.
The brief – sharply criticized by gun control advocates -argued that a state’s efforts to regulate nonprofit entities must be balanced against the right to free speech.
It contended that James is going beyond enforcing the law, to making herself the law.
“The New York Attorney General cannot be allowed to wield the power of her office to discriminate against the NRA simply because she does not like its members’ political views, advocacy or defense of a constitutional right,” the brief stated.
The brief points to comments the attorney general made about the NRA as indicative of her political motives in the case.
“The NY AG calls the NRA a ‘criminal enterprise’ and a ‘terrorist’ organization,'” the brief from the attorneys general states.
“These are not the words of a state official scrupulously enforcing nonprofit governance law,” the brief says.
“Rather, those words underscore what the NY AG’s dissolution case really is: a politically motivated assault on free speech and an effort to destroy both a fundamental constitutional right and a political opponent dedicated to defending that right.
“Thankfully, the First Amendment protects the right to advocate for the Second.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for firearms restrictions and against gun violence, blasted the brief filed by the attorneys general.
“These attorneys general may want to keep the NRA in fighting shape to fund their guns-everywhere agenda, but the fact is that the NRA sealed its own fate with its corrupt business practices,” Everytown President John Feinblatt said in a statement.
“No one is above the law, least of all the NRA, which has done unspeakable damage to our political system.”
