NRA declares victory in legal battle against San Francisco
The Federalist staff writer Bre Payton o the backlash over former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s comments on the NRA.
The National Rifle Association declared victory in its legal battle against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who declared the group a “national terrorist organization,” after the city’s mayor announced that no municipality can stop businesses from working with them.
Mayor London Breed and Dennis J. Herrera, the city attorney, penned a formal memo to officials on Sept. 23 stating no city "department will take steps to restrict any contractor from doing business with the NRA or to restrict city contracting opportunities for any business that has any relationship with the NRA,” according to an NRA press release from Monday.
Breed told FOX Business in a statement Wednesday that the country is facing "an epidemic of gun violence."
"[W]e need to hold organizations like the NRA accountable for their obstruction to real reforms to make our communities us safer," she said. "While this non-binding resolution has no force of law behind it, this doesn’t take away from the fact that the NRA continues to shamefully stand in the way of every single piece of gun control legislation that can and will save lives.”
The mayor's office also provided FOX Business with a copy of the memo, which can be found below.
On Sept. 3, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a three-page resolution, making the “terrorist organization” declaration. The resolution also called for vendors to re-evaluate their relationships with the NRA and “limit those entities … from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization," according to documents published at the time by SFGate.com.
The resolution was authored by Supervisor Catherine Stefani after a late July shooting spree at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, held in the Bay area, that left four people dead and more than a dozen injured.
The NRA, in turn, filed suit on Sept. 9, accusing the city and county of San Francisco, along with 11 members of the board of supervisors, of violating its constitutional rights to free speech and free association as well as seeking to impose censorship. Unchecked, San Francisco's measure would have a "chilling effect" on the organization and its members, the NRA said.
“The memo serves as a clear concession and a well-deserved win for the First and Second Amendments of the United States Constitution,” one of the organization’s attorneys, William A. Brewer III, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that in today’s polarized times, some elected officials would rather silence opposing arguments than engage in good-faith debate.
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Breed took to Twitter shortly after the NRA’s announcement, to condemn the organization for releasing the information on the second anniversary of the Las Vegas shooting that killed 58 people.
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John Cote, communications director for the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, insisted that the memo "is not a concession."
"It just explains what has always been true — the resolution does not change the law," Cote told FOX Business. "If the NRA thinks this is a win, it’s only because their lawsuit completely distorts what the resolution actually does.”