Supreme Court Will Hear Mexico’s Lawsuit Against US Gun Makers in March

An attendee walks through the Smith & Wesson booth during the 2013 NRA Annual Meeting and Exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on May 3, 2013. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Supreme Court on Nov. 22 scheduled oral argument for March 4, 2025, in U.S. gun companies’ appeal in Mexico’s ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against the firearms businesses.

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

The defendants are gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson and gun wholesaler Interstate Arms.

Mexico argues 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 appeal concerns the Jan. 22 decision of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that let the lawsuit proceed.

In the ruling, 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 returned the case to U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor of Massachusetts, who had previously dismissed the lawsuit against all eight of the original 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 of this year, he ruled that Mexico had failed to present enough evidence to show that six of the companies were connected to gun crime in Mexico and dismissed them as defendants. Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms remained as defendants in the suit.

In an Aug. 8 brief, Smith & Wesson attorney Noel Francisco urged the Supreme Court to 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,” Francisco said.

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

Mexico argued in a July 3 brief 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 brief states.

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 says.

The case is Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June 2025.