The Supreme Court unanimously struck down Mexico’s challenge to U.S. gun manufacturers, holding that they cannot be blamed for crime and cartel violence south of the border.
Justice Elena Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion of the court. Justices Clarence Thomas and Kentanji Brown Jackson filed concurring opinions.
Kagan ruled that because Mexico did not plausibly allege that gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers, the Protecting Lawful Commerce in Arms Act bars Mexico’s lawsuit from proceeding.
“The kinds of allegations Mexico makes cannot satisfy the demands of the statute’s predicate exception,” she wrote. “That exception permits a suit to be brought against a gun manufacturer that has aided and abetted a firearms violation (and in so doing proximately caused the plaintiff ’s harm).”
“Mexico’s complaint … does not plausibly allege such aiding and abetting,” Kagan added. “So this suit remains subject to PLCAA’s general bar: An action cannot be brought against a manufacturer if, like Mexico’s, it is founded on a third party’s criminal use of the company’s product.”
In Smith & Wesson v. Mexico, the Supreme Court took up the questions of whether the production and sale of firearms in the U.S. is the proximate cause of alleged injuries to the Mexican government and whether firearms companies effectively aid and abet illegal firearms trafficking by making guns while knowing that some of their products are illegally trafficked.
Mexico sued Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Beretta, Colt, Glock, and others in federal court in Massachusetts, alleging harms in common law for the companies’ alleged abetting of cartel violence in Mexico. The district court denied Mexico’s claims, finding that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2005, forbids a foreign government from suing U.S. companies on those grounds.
The 1st Circuit Court reversed the decision, however, ruling that Mexico had successfully claimed that the law does not apply, since it does not protect “an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product 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.”
Noel Francisco, who previously served as solicitor general in President Donald Trump’s first term, argued before the Supreme Court in March that when Congress enacted the Protecting Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, it intended to “prohibit lawsuits just like this one.”
Catherine Stetson, representing the Mexican government, claimed the law only aimed to guard against gunmakers being held liable for criminals’ actions. She noted that Congress could have barred all lawsuits against the gun industry, but instead opted for a carve-out for specific claims.
Gun rights groups praised the ruling.
“The U.S. Supreme Court correctly renounced the tactics Mexico and its American collaborators used to try to extort and impoverish America’s firearms industry,” Doug Hamlin, executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, said in a statement. He said the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is law “due to the work of NRA-ILA and NRA members in the early 2000s,” referring to the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA-ILA, called the ruling a “monumental victory for the lawful commerce of constitutionally protected products.”
The gun control groups Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives Action Fund supported Mexico in the suit.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lamented the ruling.
“Gun trafficking from the United States to Mexico is fueling a cycle of tremendous violence,” he said in a statement Thursday. “Lawless gun manufacturers, international criminals, and drug cartels are weaponizing our lax gun laws in America to facilitate violence, traffic drugs, and wreak havoc across the globe.”
“This ruling does not address that crisis,” Durbin added. “While it’s a temporary win for gun manufacturers, the Supreme Court’s decision is narrow and specific to the claims in this case.”
