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Cuomo Moves to Scrap N.R.A. Lawsuit Accusing Him of ‘Blacklisting’ Easter Sunday to keep NRA members out of Nassau OTB
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
By Jacey Fortin
The long-running battle between Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and the National Rifle Association, which says it has lost millions of dollars because of state officials’ political agenda, entered another round of legal wrangling and public posturing this week.
Mr. Cuomo announced on Friday that the state was moving to dismiss a lawsuit the N.R.A. filed in federal court in May, which he called “frivolous.” The lawsuit, which accused state officials of “blacklisting” the gun rights organization, was amended with sharper language last month.
At issue is whether New York regulators violated the constitutional rights of the N.R.A. by preventing financial institutions and insurers in the state from doing business with the organization.
In the lawsuit, the N.R.A. accused Mr. Cuomo, as well as the New York State Department of Financial Services and its superintendent, Maria T. Vullo, of discrimination that violated the organization’s right to free speech.
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Last month’s amended complaint included more details about how state regulators have squeezed the organization.
The N.R.A. said officials had discouraged banks and insurers, including Lockton Companies and Chubb Group Holdings, from working with it.
If insurers remain wary, the organization said, it could be forced to shut down some of its programs, such as its online video channel, NRATV.
“Defendants’ conduct indeed shocks the conscience,” the complaint said.
Mr. Cuomo’s response on Friday was terse: “If I could have put the N.R.A. out of business, I would have done it 20 years ago.”
While the complaint said the N.R.A. had “suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages” because of New York State officials, it did not make specific claims about the organization’s current financial standing.
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Much of the argument revolves around Carry Guard, an insurance program started by the N.R.A. last year that was meant to cover legal fees for people who fired a weapon in self-defense.
New York financial regulators began investigating the program in October. That investigation was continuing when a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February.
Survivors of the shooting have led protests in support of stricter gun control. Politicians have voiced their support, including Mr. Cuomo, who stretched out on a sidewalk to participate in a “die-in” with students in Lower Manhattan in March. Several businesses including car rental services, airlines, technology companies and insurers announced that they were cutting ties with the N.R.A.
Three months after the Parkland shooting, the Department of Financial Services announced that Lockton and an affiliate would pay a fine of $7 million while Chubb and a subsidiary would pay $1.3 million for underwriting Carry Guard.
According to the department, the program “unlawfully provided liability insurance to gun owners for acts of intentional wrongdoing.”
Days later, the N.R.A. filed its initial complaint, arguing that the state’s aims went far beyond its opposition to Carry Guard. “From the outset, it was clear that the investigation was meant to advance Cuomo’s political agenda by stifling the N.R.A.’s speech and retaliating against the N.R.A. based on its viewpoint on gun control issues,” it said, claiming that its constitutional rights had been violated through conspiracy and implicit censorship.
Last month’s amendments added two more accusations: that state officials had interfered with potential revenue and that they had violated the N.R.A.’s freedom of association.
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“Defendants seek to silence one of America’s oldest constitutional rights advocates,” it said. “If their abuses are not enjoined, they will soon, substantially, succeed.”
In announcing the filing to dismiss the suit, Mr. Cuomo said that “while the N.R.A. tries to play the victim, New York stands with the real victims — the thousands of people whose lives are cut short by gun violence every year.”
The N.R.A. is a staunch, sometimes incendiary defender of the Second Amendment with a long record of hobbling regulatory efforts, grading legislators on their voting histories and running ads suggesting that the rights of gun owners are forever under siege.
During the 2016 presidential election cycle, the N.R.A. spent $20 million to persuade voters to reject Hillary Clinton and another $11 million in support of Donald J. Trump. Public records from that year showed that the organization’s expenses exceeded revenues by about $46 million.
Donations to the organization spiked after the Parkland shooting, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.
William Brewer, a partner at Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors who is lead counsel in the organization’s lawsuit against the New York officials, said on Saturday that the N.R.A. is growing and “in good financial standing.”
“However, the conduct of defendants, from the home state of the N.R.A., now threaten the financial growth and overall trajectory of the organization,” he said.
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On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Cuomo doubled down in his opposition to Carry Guard, announcing a “national effort urging states across the country to follow New York’s lead and outlaw” the insurance program.
“At a time when Washington has completely abdicated its responsibility to protect the American people, states must lead,” he said in a statement.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Asks for Dismissal Of ‘Frivolous’ N.R.A. Suit. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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