A federal district court on Thursday upheld a New York law holding gun manufacturers potentially liable for mass shootings and other violent incidents.
The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Manhattan, dismissed a claim by gun groups that the law imposes an “undue burden” on firearm commerce. Nor is the state law too vague to be enforceable; nor do federal laws prohibit states from applying their own laws to the sale and marketing of firearms, the court said in a 3-0 decision.
Judge Eunice C. Lee, writing for the court, said a lawsuit seeking to stop the law’s implementation did not show that the law was “unenforceable in all its applications.”
Though the case can be appealed, anti-violence groups said the ruling could prove a “bellwether for other challenges to similar laws across the country.”
“New York’s landmark gun industry accountability law has created a new pathway for victims and their families to hold bad actors in the gun industry accountable for their role in fueling the epidemic of gun violence,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, the litigation arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, an anti-gun violence group.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called it a “massive victory for public safety and the rule of law.”
The gun trade association that filed the lawsuit called the ruling “disappointing.”
The state law was approved in New York in 2021 and updated in 2024, seeking to provide a way to sue firearms manufacturers, marketers and sellers after gun-related tragedies such as school shootings. It sought to hold them responsible if they “knowingly or recklessly endanger the safety or health of the public through their sale or marketing of firearms,” according to the 2nd Circuit court.
It was challenged in a lawsuit filed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association of firearms manufacturers that ships firearms into New York. Others joining the lawsuit included gun makers such as Glock, Beretta and Smith & Wesson. They claimed the New York law ran afoul of the 2005 federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in which Congress provided substantial immunity to gun manufacturers.
But the 2nd Circuit said the federal law allows lawsuits against gun manufacturers in cases involving “knowing violations of state and federal laws applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms.”
Notably, Judge Denis Jacobs, in a concurring opinion, said he agreed with his colleagues the New York law could be applied consistently with the U.S. Constitution but called the state law “nothing short of an attempt to end-run” the 2005 federal law.
Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the NSSF, agreed, saying the federal law is “designed to prohibit frivolous lawsuits against members of the firearm industry, and we continue to believe the New York statute is intended to evade the will of Congress.”
