The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in NRA v. Vullo was not surprising. It is also not surprising that Chief Justice Roberts assigned the case to Justice Sotomayor. The Chief loves optics, and nothing screams bipartisanship more than an Obama nominee ruling in favor of the NRA against her former home state. Indeed, if I had to guess, this was not Justice Sotomayor's preferred assignment–she probably would have rather written an ERISA opinion. But there was one feature of the majority decision that likely gave Justice Sotomayor some delayed satisfaction.
Flash back to Trump v. Hawaii. One of the main issues in that case was to what extent should the courts consider tweets from candidate- and President-Trump that related to the travel ban. Justice Sotomayor's dissent, which I heard her read in Court, focused at great length on those social media postings. She could not understand how the majority could turn a blind eye to those tweets. Chief Justice Roberts, as he often does, simply made up a test that allowed him to acknowledge the tweets, but find they were not dispositive. But he overruled Korematsu, so just look the other way!
Fast forward to NRA v. Vullo, another First Amendment case with allegations of improper motivation. Maria Vullo, the only defendant left standing, was the former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS). Former-Governor Andrew Cuomo was also sued, and was later dismissed from the case. But you wouldn't know it from Justice Sotomayor's opinion. She references Cuomo over and over again, including his social media postings.
