By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday spared two American gun companies from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels and fueling gun violence in the southern neighbor of the United States.
The justices in a 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s ruling that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed against firearms maker Smith & Wesson and distributor Interstate Arms. The lower court had found that Mexico plausibly alleged that the companies aided and abetted illegal gun sales, harming its government.
The companies had argued for the dismissal of Mexico’s suit, filed in Boston in 2021, under a 2005 U.S. law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that broadly shields gun companies from liability for crimes committed with their products. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in 2024 that the alleged conduct by the companies fell outside these protections.
“Mexico alleges that the companies aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.
The case came to the Supreme Court at a complicated time for U.S.-Mexican relations as President Donald Trump pursues on-again, off-again tariffs on Mexican goods. Trump has also accused Mexico of doing too little to stop the flow of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and migrant arrivals at the border.
Mexico’s lawsuit, filed in Boston in 2021, accused the two companies of violating various U.S. and Mexican laws. Mexico claims that the companies have deliberately maintained a distribution system that included firearms dealers who knowingly sell weapons to third-party, or “straw,” purchasers who then traffic guns to cartels in Mexico.
The suit also accused the companies of unlawfully designing and marketing their guns as military-grade weapons to drive up demand among the cartels, including by associating their products with the American military and law enforcement. The gun companies said they make and sell lawful products.
To avoid its lawsuit being dismissed under the 2005 law, Mexico was required to plausibly allege that the companies aided and abetted illegal gun sales and that such conduct was the “proximate cause” – a legal principle involving who is responsible for causing an injury – of the harms claimed by Mexico.
Mexico in the lawsuit sought monetary damages of an unspecified amount and a court order requiring Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms to take steps to “abate and remedy the public nuisance they have created in Mexico.”
Gun violence fueled by trafficked U.S.-made firearms has contributed to a decline in business investment and economic activity in Mexico and forced its government to incur unusually high costs on services including healthcare, law enforcement and the military, according to the lawsuit.
Mexico, a country with strict firearms laws, has said most of its gun homicides are committed with weapons trafficked from the United States and valued at more than $250 million annually.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on March 4.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
