Wyoming Gun Owners v. Gray, et al., No. 22-8019 (10th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this CaseWyoming Gun Owners, a non-profit gun rights advocacy group, aired a provocative radio ad in the run-up to Wyoming’s 2020 primary election. The ad extolled the pro-gun credentials of one candidate while branding the other as out of touch with Wyoming values. Under Wyoming law, an advertisement that refers to a candidate and advocates for his victory or defeat—or can only be reasonably understood in that way—generally constitutes an electioneering communication. The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office flagged Wyoming Gun Owners’ advertisement as an electioneering communication. The organization subsequently sued the Secretary of State (and related parties) in federal district court, arguing that various provisions of the Wyoming statute were void for vagueness and that the disclosure scheme was not constitutionally justified. The district court agreed and determined that the disclosure regime failed exacting scrutiny as applied to WyGO and found a provision within the scheme void for vagueness as applied to WyGO. The Secretary appealed the latter two rulings and WyGO cross-appealed the rest. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court on most claims: the disclosure regime failed exacting scrutiny as applied to WyGO for lack of narrow tailoring; and the regime’s requirement that expenditures for speech “related to” candidate campaigns must be disclosed was void for vagueness as applied to WyGO. The district court did, however, erroneously deny WyGO’s request for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The Court reversed and remanded for an accounting of fees.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.