The Supreme Court has said gun companies should not face a lawsuit in which the Mexican government was trying to hold them liable for cartel-related violence involving firearms from the United States.
In a 9–0 decision on June 5, the court said that the allegations gun companies faced weren’t the type that, if proven, would make them liable under the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The law generally protects firearms companies from lawsuits based on criminals misusing their products, but it contains an exception. More specifically, the law allows companies to face lawsuits if they knowingly violated state or federal law and if that violation was a proximate cause of a given harm.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit had held gun companies fell under that exception.
The case, known as Smith and Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, came from the gun companies asking the Supreme Court to reverse the First Circuit’s ruling.
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas issued separate concurrences. Thomas said that in order for plaintiffs such as Mexico to plausibly allege a violation, they should also include an earlier finding of guilt or liability.
“Allowing plaintiffs to proffer mere allegations of a predicate violation would force many defendants in [Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act] litigation to litigate their criminal guilt in a civil proceeding, without the full panoply of protections that we otherwise afford to criminal defendants,” he said.
The appeals court said Mexico’s lawsuit had adequately alleged that the firearm companies had aided and abetted “the sale of firearms by dealers in knowing violation of relevant state and federal laws.”
It added that “the Mexican government’s expenditure of funds to parry the cartels is a foreseeable and direct consequence” of dealers selling guns to buyers with illegal intentions.
Kagan, however, said in her majority opinion that Mexico’s allegation wasn’t linking the companies to dealers.
“In asserting that the manufacturers intentionally supply guns to bad-apple dealers, Mexico never confronts that the manufacturers do not directly supply any dealers, bad-apple or otherwise,” she said. “They instead sell firearms to middlemen distributors, whom Mexico has never claimed lack independence.”
