Judge Blocks L.A. From Enforcing Law Requiring Disclosure Of NRA Ties

The National Rifle Association has come under serious fire as of late, but the organization is still considered the biggest boogieman for anti-gunners. There’s a reason for that. It’s still the largest gun rights organization out there with more money and power than any of its competitors.

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As a result, anti-gunners are trying to find more and more ways to hurt the organization.

The City of Los Angeles thought to try something a little different by passing a law that would require contractors to disclose any relationship they might have with the NRA.

Unsurprisingly, the NRA sued.

More importantly, though, they won the first battle, a preliminary injunction.

A federal judge blocked Los Angeles from enforcing a law requiring contractors seeking to do business with the city to disclose their ties to the National Rifle Association.

In a victory for the gun rights group, U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which took effect on April 1.

Wilson said the NRA was likely to show that the law, which requires companies seeking city contracts to disclose NRA contracts or sponsorship, violated its constitutional First Amendment right to free speech and would cause irreparable harm.

The judge found only a slight relationship between the law and Los Angeles’ interests in public safety and transparent government, and said an injunction would better serve the public interest. Los Angeles is home to about 4 million people.

“It is not within the public interest to subject potential city contractors to a disclosure requirement motivated by political animus and completely unrelated to their ability to perform the job,” wrote Wilson, an appointee of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan.

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To be sure, the disclosure requirement was, at a minimum, an intimidation tactic. They wanted to pressure potential contractors to sever any ties with the NRA or face the possibility of not getting a lucrative city contract. While the law didn’t expressly mandate that jobs would be impacted by those relationships, the fact that they were required to disclose them at all was enough.

People should be free to separate their professional life from their politics. While those who expressly work in the political sphere in some manner don’t really have that option, most people don’t really have any reason in which to tie their professional life to their personal politics. Do you really care where your plumber stands on climate change? When you don’t have power after a storm, do you really care if the lineman trying to restore it has the same stance on abortion as you?

Oh, on some level, sure. You’d like for everyone to agree with you, but that position isn’t necessary for them to do the job for you and do it well.

My point, though, is that their politics aren’t relevant to the job at hand, nor should they be.

What the city of Los Angeles was trying to do, though, is make it relevant. For the hard-left in this country, someone’s politics has become more and more relevant to every aspect of their life. Someone with the wrong opinions shouldn’t be ignored, in their minds, they should be destroyed. We’ve seen how many people have their lives upended because they espoused the wrong views?

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This measure was nothing more than an attempt to do the exact same thing but by a local government.

I’m confident that the temporary injunction will become a more permanent one. I’m also confident that the city will appeal it and try and take it higher until, possibly, it’s before the Supreme Court. Honestly, I’d love to see them get smacked down by SCOTUS on this one, but until then, I’ll just be happy knowing that they can’t make people disclose their opinions on the Second Amendment nor try to materially harm the National Rifle Association through these kinds of strongarm tactics.

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