POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY: FREE SPEECH ADVOCATES SEEK RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST
ATTORNEY GENERAL GURBIR GREWAL
BY DUNCAN JOHNSON
SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2019/02/free-speech-advocates-seek-restraining-order-against-nj-ag-grewal/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
TRENTON, New Jersey –-(Ammoland.com)- Today, attorneys for six advocacy organizations and one individual, Firearms Policy Coalition founder Brandon Combs, filed a new lawsuit and a motion seeking a restraining order and preliminary injunction against New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. The case was filed just days after Grewal’s Office of the Attorney General sent a threat of prosecution to Cloudflare, a major Internet services company headquartered in San Francisco, about www.CodeIsFreeSpeech.com. A copy of key court filings can be viewed or downloaded at www.codeisfreespeechlawsuit.com.
According to the complaint, on Saturday, February 3 the CodeIsFreeSpeech.com website’s act of republishing some of Defense Distributed’s digital firearms information “was met with yet another of Grewal’s Orwellian take-down orders,” demanding that Cloudflare “delete all files described within 24 hours or [Grewal’s Office] will be forced to press charges.”
“By issuing a takedown demand against” the entire website, “Grewal sought to compel the complete and total suppression of the political speech at CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, the links to other advocacy websites and their educational and political resources, links to political tee shirts, and even the very text of the United States Constitution itself,” the plaintiffs said in the filing. Attorneys for the plaintiffs also filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Grewal. The Attorney General’s threats of prosecution and other civil enforcement actions under New Jersey laws, the plaintiffs say, violate their constitutional rights.
Last November, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a new speech crime into law, in Senate Bill 2465. Among other things, it created a new “third degree crime” for “a person to distribute by any means, including the Internet, to a person in New Jersey” certain kinds of speech, including “digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer…”
CodeIsFreeSpeech.com “is a publicly available website for the publication and republication of truthful, non-misleading, non-commercial political speech and information that is protected under the United States Constitution,” the complaint says. “Its purpose is to allow people to share knowledge and empower them to exercise their fundamental, individual rights. It was created and developed during the week of July 22, 2018—long before the State enacted Senate Bill 2465.”
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Chad Flores, Daniel Hammond, and Hannah Roblyer of Texas-based Beck Redden LLP and Daniel L. Schmutter of New Jersey law firm Hartman & Winnicki.
The CodeIsFreeSpeech.com website can be additionally accessed through URLs GurbirGrewalisaTyrant.com and PhilMurphyisaTyrant.com.
Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Firearms Policy Foundation (www.firearmsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPF’s mission is to defend the Constitution of the United States and the People’s rights, privileges and immunities deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, especially the inalienable, fundamental, and individual right to keep and bear arms.
The Calguns Foundation (www.calgunsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves its members, supporters, and the public through educational, cultural, and judicial efforts to advance Second Amendment and related civil rights.
California Association of Federal Firearm Licensees (www.calffl.org) is California’s advocacy group for Second Amendment and related economic rights. CAL-FFL members include firearm dealers, training professionals, shooting ranges, collectors, gun owners, and others who participate in the firearms ecosystem.
Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
Defense Distributed (defdist.org) is a non-profit, private defense firm principally engaged in the research, design, development, and manufacture of products and services for the benefit of the American rifleman. Since 2012, DD has been headquartered in Austin, Texas.
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3D Gun Software Developer Sues New Jersey’s AG Over His Attack on Its First Amendment Rights
BY BOB ADELMANN
SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/31440-3d-gun-software-developer-sues-new-jersey-s-ag-over-his-attack-on-its-first-amendment-rights?vsmaid=3332&vcid=3987; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Cody Wilson, the founder of Defense Distributed (which provides firearm-related software for 3D printers), was delighted when the Department of Justice relented last July in its attempt to shut him and his company down. Without fanfare, the DOJ not only settled with Cody and his company, it agreed to pay a large part of his legal fees as well.
Cody celebrated and then put his people back to work on developing more software for firearms enthusiasts, saying: “I have developers for anything and everything, some of the best talent in the world.… It’s all ready to go. I have interested stakeholders [and] a large network [of supporters who] care about what I do.”
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal did not share in Cody’s victory. Instead, he launched an attack on Wilson, his company, and the website that hosted his software. He frequently threatened Wilson publicly, declaring he would “come and get” him, and would “stop him” from exercising his newly resurrected First Amendment rights to freedom of speech over the Internet.
Grewal upped the ante on February 2 by sending this letter to Wilson’s company’s web host Cloudfare:
This is a notice to Cloudflare that you are serving files consisting of 3D printable firearms in violation of NJ Stat. Ann. § 2C:39-9 3(l)(2). These files are accessible via Cloudflare's New Jersey data center. You shall delete all files described within 24 hours or we will be forced to press charges in order to preserve the safety of the citizens of New Jersey.
Three days later Wilson’s company joined with the Second Amendment Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, and several other pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment, pro-Constitution groups in suing Grewal for violating his First Amendment rights. Wilson thought the matter was settled back in July, but Grewal disagreed.
The nut of Wilson’s complaint against Grewal appears on page 38 of his 62-page lawsuit, which states:
Grewal’s conduct subjects the Plaintiffs to an unconstitutional abridgement of First Amendment freedoms; an unconstitutional infringement of Second Amendment rights; an unconstitutional violation of the right to equal protection of the laws; an unconstitutional deprivation of liberty and property without due process of law; an unconstitutional violation of the Commerce Clause; and regulation by way of state laws that are preempted by federal law.
Wilson himself boiled the issue down to this: “This is a state politician telling a host in California and a national CDN (content delivery network) service that they are guilty of a speech crime in New Jersey based on the public content they’re merely republished on the … internet.”
Grewal defended his grievous overreach by declaring that, under New Jersey’s law passed in November that targeted Wilson and his company, it is now a crime for “a person to distribute by any means, including the internet … digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code of instructions … that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture or produce a firearm, firearm receiver, magazine, or firearm component.”
This, in effect, is a nationwide limit on the First Amendment as a means to infringe on Second Amendment rights. As Declan McCullough explained at Reason:
As a practical matter, because the New Jersey law prohibits the distribution of firearm-manufacturing information to any "person in New Jersey," it's effectively a national ban. It imposes New Jersey's idiosyncratic views on firearm manufacturing instructions (and the First and Second Amendments) on the entire nation.
Gunsmiths in Idaho and Montana are unlikely to be delighted at having Grewal dictate what they're allowed to do online.
In addition, plans can be used for purposes other than manufacturing, including simulation or modeling, making the law even broader than it might seem at first glance.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) explained why they were assisting Wilson in his suit against Grewal:
The lawsuit contends that after New Jersey lawmakers passed the new statute last November, Attorney General Grewal censored the plaintiffs’ free speech rights by threatening to jail them or anyone else that violates a section of the law that criminalizes distribution of digital instructions that may be used to produce a firearm with a three-dimensional printer.
SAF’s Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb said, “This isn’t about firearms — it’s about freedom of speech. If Attorney General Grewal can suppress the sharing of technical information about the production of firearms components using modern technology, what else might he, or another attorney general choose to suppress at some future date if he or she doesn’t like it?”
It’s also about the Second Amendment. Grewal seeks to infringe on rights guaranteed by it to citizens by limiting their ability to exercise them through his grievous assault on the First.
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