A federal judge ruled Wednesday night that claims made by the National Rifle Association against a non-profit seeking to sever ties with the organization cannot be decided in federal court.
The NRA sued the NRA Foundation, which has since rebranded as the 1791 Foundation, accusing it of misusing intellectual property, unjust enrichment and breach of contract, The Wall Street Journal reported. United States District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, ruled that most of the NRA’s claims were “novel” and therefore needed to be heard in a separate legal action in local courts.
“The Court finds that adjudicating the NRA’s D.C.-law claims would require more judicial resources than the federal claims at every stage of this case,” Sooknanan wrote in the 31-page opinion. “As an initial matter, although not dispositive, the NRA’s D.C.-law claims outnumber its federal claims.”
“The district court upheld the NRA’s trademark claims and rejected the Foundation’s arguments for a ruling in its favor on the NRA’s other claims,” Andrew Grossman, an attorney with Baker Hostettler representing the NRA in the case, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The NRA has refiled its D.C.-law claims in the D.C. Superior Court.”
The dispute originated in the August 2020 lawsuit filed by Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, which sought the dissolution of the NRA. A Manhattan jury later found that then-NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre had enriched himself, and he was barred from any leadership role in the group for ten years.
Prior to the ruling, LaPierre had stepped down for health reasons, testifying in January 2024 that he suffered from late-stage Lyme disease, with symptoms including a “form of dementia” and that doctors had feared he would suffer a “serious medical episode.”
“As expected, the courts have rejected the organization formerly known as the NRA Foundation’s erroneous attempt to dismiss the NRA’s lawsuit,” the NRA said in a statement to the DCNF. “This ruling clears the way for our challenge to proceed and explicitly directs the NRA to file a companion case in Washington, D.C. We anticipated this result and have filed that second lawsuit in the nation’s capital.”
(DCNF)