The justices are likely to give gun companies a win, but they aren’t sure how they will do it yet.
The nation of Mexico’s lawsuit against several major US gun manufacturers, known as Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, was cursed long before it reached the Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s oral argument in the case only confirmed that. It appears that at least seven, and possibly as many as all nine, of the justices will reject Mexico’s argument that gun companies are liable for crimes committed with their products across the US-Mexico border.SCOTUS, Explained
Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser.
Mexico sued seven gun companies plus a company that distributes firearms, claiming that these companies knowingly and unlawfully supply guns to drug cartels. According to a federal appeals court, the defendants in this case “produce more than sixty-eight percent of the U.S. guns trafficked into Mexico, which comes out to between 342,000 and 597,000 guns each year.”
Though the appeals court determined that this case could move forward, at least for now, Mexico’s lawsuit seemed to hit a wall during Tuesday’s argument. All six of the Court’s Republicans plus Biden-appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sounded highly skeptical of Mexico’s claims, and all nine justices asked questions suggesting that they may not buy Mexico’s legal theory.
One reason why this case is cursed is a 2005 federal law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”), which gives gun companies an unusual level of immunity from lawsuits. Under PLCAA, gun manufacturers are immune from most suits “for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.”
PLCAA does allow gun companies to be sued when they “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.” In Smith & Wesson, Mexico claims gun companies aided and abetted violations of federal law by knowingly distributing guns to traffickers who provide them to drug cartels.
While few, if any of the justices seemed to buy that argument, they seemed quite unsure about how they would rule that the gun companies are immune from this lawsuit. It was clear, however, that Mexico is unlikely to prevail in this lawsuit. The open question is how the justices will get to that result.The many ways that Mexico could lose this case, briefly explained
PLCAA’s core provision prohibits lawsuits arising out of “the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a gun by a “third party,” thus cutting off most lawsuits against gun companies if someone uses their product to commit a crime. The law does contain an exception, but only when the gun company “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute,” and only when that violation was “a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.
