High court rules on Mexico’s suit against U.S. gun makers

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.

Kagan wrote that because Mexico did not plausibly allege that gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers, federal law bars Mexico’s lawsuit from proceeding.

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.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]