NRA-ILA GRASSROOTS ALERT: Vol. 21, No. 11 03/14/2014 NRA Files Friend of the Court Brief in Appeal of NSA Spying Case This week, NRA filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The brief supports the American Civil Liberties Union's request for reversal of a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that upheld the National Security Agency's data collection program. We previously reported on the lower court case in an article available here. That article contains a more detailed description of NRA's arguments, but they generally make two major points. First, that the NSA's mass data collection violates the First Amendment's freedom of association protection because individuals will be chilled from joining certain groups – like NRA – that have been the target of hostility by others, including certain public officials, and identify their members' private social, political, or religious beliefs to t...