CNN
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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 lawsuit, Kagan wrote, “does not plausibly allege” that the gunmakers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of their firearms to Mexican traffickers.
“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,” Kagan wrote. “They instead sell firearms to middlemen distributors, whom Mexico has never claimed lack independence.”
The justices, however, avoided delving into a broader analysis that could have further shielded the manufacturers from future litigation. That more narrow ruling likely explains why the court ended up with a unanimous opinion.
“Today’s decision will end Mexico’s lawsuit against the gun industry, but it does not affect our ability and resolve to hold those who break the law accountable,” said David Pucino, legal director at the gun control group GIFFORDS Law Center.
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.”
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.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
