Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Challenge to Mexico’s Lawsuit Against US Gun Makers

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Aug. 14, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Oct. 4 to hear U.S. gun makers’ appeal in Mexico’s ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against the firearms companies.

In the lawsuit, Mexico is seeking $10 billion from U.S. gun companies for allegedly flooding that country with firearms. Mexico blames the companies for a violent crime wave, saying their actions benefited criminal cartels.

Mexico also claims that illegal gun trafficking into that country is driven largely by Mexican drug cartels’ demands for military-style weapons.

Although some gun control activists welcome Mexico’s lawsuit, gun rights advocates say it constitutes foreign interference in U.S. affairs and is aimed at crippling the U.S. firearms industry and weakening the Second Amendment protections enjoyed by Americans.

The gun companies say the suit is barred by the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) of 2005, which was enacted to protect the industry from frivolous lawsuits.

The justices granted the petition in Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos without comment. No justices dissented.

Smith & Wesson had asked the court to expedite its petition on Aug. 8, the day after a lower court threw out the case against six out of eight gun companies in the lawsuit, which is pending in federal district court in Massachusetts. The decision left gun maker Smith & Wesson and gun wholesaler Interstate Arms remaining as defendants.

The appeal concerns the Jan. 22 decision of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

Circuit Judge William Kayatta wrote that even though the PLCAA limits lawsuits that foreign governments may bring in U.S. courts for harm experienced outside the United States, Mexico could move forward because it made a plausible argument that the companies committed “knowing violations of statutes regulating the sale or marketing of firearms.”

Kayatta wrote that a jump in gun violence in Mexico in recent years “correlates” with the boost in gun production in the United States that began when the U.S. assault weapon ban expired in 2004.

The First Circuit sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor of Massachusetts, who had previously dismissed the lawsuit against all eight corporate defendants on Sept. 30, 2022.

Saylor found in 2022 that the PLCAA “unequivocally bars lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the acts of individuals using guns for their intended purpose.”

When Saylor revisited the case on Aug. 7, he ruled that Mexico had failed to present enough evidence to show that six of the companies were connected to gun crime in Mexico.

Smith & Wesson attorney Noel Francisco of Jones Day in Washington wrote in an Aug. 8 brief that the Supreme Court should hear the case because “leading members of the American firearms industry are facing years of litigation costs and the specter of business-crushing liability.”

“Congress made clear in PLCAA that this sort of lawfare against any law-abiding member of the firearms industry has no business in American courts, and must be promptly dismissed.”

Lawfare is the strategic use of legal proceedings to damage, delegitimize, or to undermine or frustrate the efforts of an opponent.

Mexico argued in a brief that it filed with the Supreme Court on July 3 that the First Circuit’s decision was correct.

The lawsuit should be allowed to proceed because the companies “deliberately chose to engage in unlawful ... conduct to profit off the criminal market for their products.”

The gun companies were wrong to argue that the prospect of them being held “liable for negligence and public nuisance” presents “an existential threat to the gun industry,” the brief stated.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear the case in December or January.