The Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit from the Mexican government that alleged American gun manufacturers should be held responsible for cartel violence on the Southwest border, a decision that shields the companies from a suit that had claimed billions in damages.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for a unanimous court explaining why the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which allows suits to go forward if they’re based on an underlying violation of a state or federal law, doesn’t allow the suit against Mexico to proceed:
“Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers,” Kagan wrote for the court. “We have little doubt that, as the complaint asserts, some such sales take place – and that the manufacturers know they do.”
“The predicate exception allows for accomplice liability only when a plaintiff makes a plausible allegation that a gun manufacturer ‘participate[d] in’ a firearms violation ‘as in something that [it] wishe[d] to bring about’ and sought to make succeed,” Kagan added. “Because Mexico’s complaint fails to do so, the defendant manufacturers retain their PLCAA-granted immunity.”
Mexico’s suit landed at a particularly fraught moment in its relationship with the US, as President Donald Trump has leaned on the country to further scale back the flow of migrants and drugs heading north. The litigation, filed in 2021, was something of a counterpoint, focusing on an American product that is contributing to the chaos at the border.
Generally, such lawsuits against the gun industry are barred by a 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that prohibits plaintiffs from suing companies over crimes committed with the guns they make. Mexico was attempting to navigate its suit through a narrow exception in that law.
Mexico sued Smith & Wesson and six other US gunmakers for $10 billion in damages, alleging that the companies design and market their guns specifically to drug cartels that then use them in the “killing and maiming of children, judges, journalists, police, and ordinary citizens throughout Mexico.” That, Mexico said, amounted to “aiding and abetting” firearms trafficking to the cartels – an act that, the country said, should qualify for an exemption to the 2005 law.
The Mexican government said that between 70% and 90% of guns recovered at crime scenes in its country are made in the US. There is only one gun store in all of Mexico, its lawyers said, and “yet the nation is awash in guns.”
Some of those weapons, Mexico said, appeared to be marketed directly to gangs, with advertisements focused on their “military-grade” and with names like the Super “El Jefe.”
But even some of the Supreme Court’s liberals, who have tended to side with gun control groups in the past, said during oral arguments in March that they were concerned with the implications of Mexico’s suit. Though the case did not involve the Second Amendment, gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, said the lawsuit was an indirect effort to “destroy” the American firearms industry by making it easier to sue companies for huge sums.
A federal district court backed the gunmakers, blocking the suit from moving forward. But the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Mexico’s suit could proceed. The gun companies appealed to the Supreme Court last spring.
The Supreme Court has been hesitant to allow people to sue companies for indirect damages in other contexts as well. In 2023, the high court rejected a suit from the victim of a 2017 terrorist attack in Turkey who claimed the social media company then known as Twitter contributed to the attack by hosting content tied to ISIS. In a unanimous decision, the court said the connection between the content at issue and the attack was too tenuous to allow the family to sue.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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