Supreme Court Skeptical Of Mexico’s Lawsuit Against US Gun Companies

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Supreme Court seemed skeptical of Mexico’s argument on March 4 that gun manufacturers should face liability for violence committed by cartels.

Multiple justices asked questions indicating that Mexico’s lawsuit lacked information to allege a certain level of wrongdoing on the part of gun companies.

Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett asked about whether Mexico could name red flag dealers that were allegedly part of the flow of guns for illegal purposes.

“You haven’t identified them that I can tell from the complaint,” Barrett told an attorney for Mexico. Justice Elena Kagan similarly told Mexico’s attorney that her side didn’t name particular dealers.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked Mexico’s attorney about the economic consequences of its theory of liability. “That’s a real concern for me,” he said.

The case, Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which ruled last year that members of the American firearm industry could face a lawsuit under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).

That law generally protects firearms companies from lawsuits based on criminals misusing their products but contains an exception that the First Circuit said was met in this case. More specifically, the law allows companies to face lawsuits if they knowingly violated state or federal law and that violation was a proximate cause of a given harm.

The appeals court said Mexico’s lawsuit had adequately alleged that the firearm companies had aided and abetted “the sale of firearms by dealers in knowing violation of relevant state and federal laws.”

It added that “the Mexican government’s expenditure of funds to parry the cartels is a foreseeable and direct consequence” of dealers selling guns to buyers with illegal intentions.

At one point, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that Mexico hadn’t done enough to show that the gun companies took some affirmative action to participate in a scheme that furthered wrongdoing.

After Sotomayor’s exchange with Mexico’s attorney, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told the attorney that she thought the PLCAA required lawsuits like Mexico’s to do more to show violations of law.

Jackson also seemed to worry that Mexico’s arguments would invite unwarranted judicial intervention.

“All of the things that you asked for in this lawsuit would amount to different kinds of regulatory constraints that I’m thinking Congress didn’t want the courts to be the ones to impose,” she said.

Justice Clarence Thomas similarly seemed to express concern that the lawsuit didn’t show a violation of particular laws. He also asked whether Mexico would run into due process issues in alleging violations of federal law by certain individuals when they hadn’t been charged with that violation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.