The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a lawsuit by the Mexican government against U.S. gun manufacturers that attempted to hold them responsible for drug cartel violence.
In a unanimous decision written by Justice Elena Kagan, the court held that U.S. legislation that shields gun makers from liability in certain cases barred the lawsuit. Mexico, she wrote, had not plausibly argued that American gun manufacturers had aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales to Mexican drug traffickers.
Mexico had claimed that the gun industry’s production and sale of arms in the United States helped fuel and supply drug cartels, harming the Mexican government. Mexican government lawyers also claimed the companies were aware that some of their guns were illegally trafficked, and that the country should therefore be allowed to sue under an exception in the law.
In her opinion, Justice Kagan noted that although Mexico has only one gun store and issues fewer than 50 gun permits a year, the country “has a severe gun violence problem, which its government views as coming from north of the border.”
During an oral argument in early March, a majority of the justices appeared skeptical that Mexico could prove a direct link between gun makers and cartel violence. Several justices appeared persuaded that a 2005 law shielding gun makers and distributors from most domestic lawsuits over injuries caused by firearms would also apply to the case brought by the Mexican government.
The case began in 2021, when Mexico filed a lawsuit against a number of American gun makers and one distributor, arguing that they shared blame for drug cartel violence. The country asked them for $10 billion in damages.
In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the Mexican government alleged that the gun industry’s actions had burdened the nation’s police, military and judicial system. Mexico also argued that the U.S. gun industry had been negligent in marketing, distributing and selling high-capacity guns.
In response, the gun industry argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because such suits were prohibited by the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That legislation was signed into law after several U.S. communities had sued firearms defendants for gun violence harms to their communities. As Justice Kagan wrote, that flurry of lawsuits prompted Congress to shield manufacturers from liability “for the downstream harms resulting from misuse of their products.”
“Mexico’s suit closely resembles the ones Congress had in mind,” Justice Kagan wrote. “It seeks to recover from American firearms manufacturers for the downstream damage Mexican cartel members wreak with their guns.”
The law contains an exception for liability if a gun manufacturer aids and abets a federal gun crime. Mexico had claimed that gun manufacturers were “willful accessories” in unlawful gun sales by firearms retailers, which allowed criminals to purchase weapons. Mexico argued that the American companies had supplied firearms to dealers who they knew illegally sold firearms to Mexican gun traffickers.
Mexico also claimed that the companies made “design and marketing decisions” aimed at fueling cartel members’ interest in the guns.
In the court’s opinion, Justice Kagan noted a special edition .38-caliber pistol called the “Emiliano Zapata 1911,” engraved with the face of the Mexican revolutionary hero with a quotation that has been attributed to him: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”
Firearms with “Spanish-language names or graphics alluding to Mexican history” may be “coveted by the cartels,” as Mexico claimed, Justice Kagan wrote, but they also may appeal to millions of law-abiding people.
A trial court had thrown out the lawsuit, but an appeals court revived the case in January 2024, saying it qualified for an exception to the law, which allows claims if there are “knowing violations” of firearms laws that directly cause a plaintiff’s injuries.
In April 2024, the gun maker Smith & Wesson asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.
In a filing to the justices in the case, Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, No. 23-1141, the manufacturer wrote that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court,” and that the country’s argument was an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.”
The company was joined by another gun maker, Interstate Arms. Other gun companies in the original lawsuit had already had claims tossed out.