The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling on Thursday in support of the National Rifle Association in a case involving the First Amendment.

The 9-0 ruling, written by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, “could make it harder for state regulators to pressure advocacy groups,” CNN reported.

The decision allows the NRA to continue its lawsuit against a New York official who encouraged banks and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights group following the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school, which resulted in 17 deaths.

“Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,” Sotomayor wrote. “Ultimately, the critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech.”

The NRA claimed that Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, pressured insurance companies to sever ties with the gun lobby and threatened enforcement actions against firms that did not comply, CNN noted.

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At the center of the dispute was a meeting Vullo had with insurance market Lloyd’s of London in 2018 in which the NRA claims she offered to not prosecute other violations as long as the company helped with the campaign against gun groups. Vullo tried to wave off the significance of the meeting, arguing in part that the NRA’s allegations of what took place were not specific.

Vullo, who served in Democratic former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, said her enforcement targeted an insurance product that is illegal in New York: third-party policies sold through the NRA that cover personal injury and criminal defense costs following the use of a firearm. Critics dubbed the policies “murder insurance.”

The decision will offer guidance to government regulators, both liberal and conservative, on the extent to which they can pressure private companies that do business with advocacy groups that some consider to be controversial.

Both conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the latter of whom President Biden appointed, wrote separate opinions in which they agreed with the majority.

The court’s opinion did not address another related case concerning whether the Biden administration overstepped its bounds by pressuring social media platforms like X and Facebook to remove content it considers misinformation, CNN noted, adding that both cases were argued on the same day in March.

While the NRA typically appears before the Supreme Court on Second Amendment issues, it found unexpected allies with its First Amendment claim. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), usually on the opposite side of the gun debate, agreed to represent the NRA before the Supreme Court.

A US district court allowed the NRA’s First Amendment arguments to proceed against Maria Vullo, though it denied some of the NRA’s other claims. However, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, concluding that Vullo’s actions were not coercive and ruling that she was entitled to qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects government officials from lawsuits under certain conditions, CNN reported.

The NRA’s case against Maria Vullo drew on the 1963 Supreme Court decision in Bantam Books v. Sullivan. This case involved a Rhode Island commission that threatened to involve the police if distributors sold books deemed obscene. The Supreme Court found such “informal censorship” to be unconstitutional.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court added one more case to its current docket involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administration of the Clean Water Act.

The justices have granted review in the case City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, SCOTUS Blog reported. They will decide whether the limitations in San Francisco’s permit for discharging wastewater into the Pacific Ocean violate the Clean Water Act.

The question is whether these limits are too general and do not set clear limits. Instead, they rely on “narrative” limits that do not allow discharges that cause or contribute to violations of any applicable water quality standard or the creation of “pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined by state law, the news source added.