US Supreme Court to Consider Whether to Allow Mexico’s Lawsuit Against US Gunmakers to Proceed

In this file image, a police cordon reading "Danger" is pictured at a crime scene where unknown assailants gunned down people at a garage in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Jan. 4, 2018. Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on July 17 that it will formally consider on Sept. 30 whether to hear an appeal related to Mexico’s ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers.

The court stated that it will consider the petition in the case of Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos at its next scheduled private judicial conference at the end of its current summer recess. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant the petition for it to move forward to oral arguments.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit determined that the litigation should be allowed to proceed in the lower courts. The issue now before the Supreme Court is whether the circuit court was justified in reversing an earlier federal district court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit.

Mexico is suing several U.S. gunmakers for allegedly flooding that country with firearms, which it argues has contributed to violent crime in that country. Mexico claimed in court papers that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of firearms found at crime scenes in that country originated in the United States.

Although some gun control activists welcome Mexico’s lawsuit, gun rights advocates say the legal action filed by a foreign government is exploiting U.S. laws in an effort to cripple the U.S. firearms industry and weaken the Second Amendment protections that Americans enjoy. The U.S. gunmakers being sued deny liability and say federal law bars the suit.

The decision to move forward with the case came after lead petitioner Smith & Wesson filed a petition with the Supreme Court on April 18. Among the co-petitioners in the appeal are Beretta U.S.A. Corp., Glock Inc., and Sturm, Ruger & Co.

In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor in Massachusetts dismissed the lawsuit that claimed that U.S. companies were intentionally undermining Mexico’s tough gun laws by making “military-style assault weapons” that find their way to drug cartels and criminals.

Judge Saylor found that the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) of 2005 “unequivocally bars lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the acts of individuals using guns for their intended purpose.” The PLCAA was enacted to protect the industry from frivolous lawsuits.

But in January, a three-judge First Circuit panel voted to allow Mexico’s lawsuit to move forward and sent the case back to the district court with instructions to proceed.

Circuit Judge William Kayatta wrote that the PLCAA places limits on the kinds of lawsuits that foreign governments may file in U.S. courts for harm experienced outside the United States but ruled that Mexico made a plausible argument that the gunmakers’ activities are covered under an exception in the statute.

The circuit court held that Mexico’s claim that it was harmed when the petitioners “deliberately aided and abetted the unlawful sale of firearms to purchasers supplying brutal cartels in Mexico” should be heard in court.

Despite strict laws making it “virtually impossible” for criminals to obtain guns lawfully in Mexico, the country nonetheless reports that it has the third-highest number of gun-related deaths in the world, rising from fewer than 2,500 in 2003 to about 23,000 in 2019, Judge Kayatta wrote.

Mexico said in a Supreme Court brief filed on July 3 that the First Circuit ruled correctly and that it should be allowed to proceed with its claim.

The gun companies “design, market, distribute, and sell guns in ways they know routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico,” the brief states.

On July 17, Smith & Wesson filed a new brief arguing that its petition “warrants this Court’s immediate review.”

A foreign country is “trying to use the American court system to bankrupt the American firearms industry based on novel and far-fetched tort claims, contrary to an express statutory command laid down by Congress.”

A tort is an act that gives rise to civil liability.

“The First Circuit’s decision eviscerates [the] PLCAA and invites the exact lawfare the statute was designed to foreclose,” the brief reads.