In one of the most high-profile cases of its current term, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in early March in a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against U.S.-based firearms manufacturers.
In Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al., v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Mexico is seeking damages caused by the use of firearms and ammunition made in the United States by cartel members, arguing that the firearms makers should not be shielded by a law passed in 2005 against such lawsuits.
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) prohibits “civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others.”
Mexico claims United States firearms makers have “aided and abetted unlawful firearms sales to traffickers for cartels in Mexico” and the firearms makers should be excluded from protections under the PLCAA. It cites language in the act known as the “predicate exemption” for the exclusion. Under the exemption, if a company knowingly violates a state or federal firearms law, and those violations are a “proximate cause” of the harm for which relief is sought, legal action can move forward.
In August 2021, Mexico sued in federal district court in Massachusetts, but the case was dismissed in September 2022 as not meeting the requirements under the PLCAA. However, on appeal, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the firearms makers on several claims.
In January 2024, Judge William J. Kayatta Jr. of the First Circuit, writing for a unanimous court, reversed the district court’s holding, believing that “the complaint adequately alleges that defendants aided and abetted the knowingly unlawful downstream trafficking of their guns into Mexico.”
The appeals court disallowed one of Mexico’s claims that the PLCAA did not apply to foreign countries suing over harm to its citizens, “finding them ultimately unavailing,” but said Mexico made a successful proximate cause argument under the PLCAA: “We also hold that Mexico's complaint plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt from the PLCAA's general prohibition,” said Kayatta, including “common law claims for injury proximately caused by a defendant's knowing violation of a predicate statute.”
Kayatta saw Mexico’s proximate cause claim as “straightforward: defendants aid and abet the trafficking of guns to the Mexican drug cartels, and this trafficking has foreseeably required the Mexican government to incur significant costs in response to the increased threats and violence accompanying drug cartels armed with an arsenal of military-grade weapons.”
The appeals court’s decision was based solely on allegations in the complaint, however, and the court further noted that “Mexico will have to support its theory of proximate causation with evidence later in the proceedings.” In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the attorneys for the firearms makers claimed the industry “has openly operated in broad daylight for years,” and “in Mexico’s eyes, continuing these lawful practices amounts to aiding and abetting the cartels.”
They also rejected the idea that Mexico could claim an exemption under the PLCAA. “The federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) precludes civil suits seeking to hold firearms companies liable for harms stemming from the downstream criminal misuse of their products. And it is nearly impossible to imagine a suit that is more clearly barred by PLCAA than this one.”
Pointing to a recent unanimous Supreme Court decision in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh (2023), they argued that Mexico must prove that “aiding and abetting criminal activity must involve something more than making products generally available while knowing that criminals may misuse some of them downstream.”
The Supreme Court accepted the case on Oct. 4, 2024, to consider if United States firearms productions and sales are the proximate cause of alleged injuries to the Mexican government from drug cartels in Mexico, and if United States firearms production aids and abets illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some products are unlawfully trafficked.
In its most recent court brief from January 2025, Mexico said the First Circuit properly ruled on the proximate cause claim as a “textbook” example and that the ruling was just the first step in a long process. “That narrow ruling, at a preliminary stage, on fact-intensive issues commonly reserved for juries, merely means that Mexico overcame one of the many hurdles standing between itself and relief,” it stated.
In a reply brief, the firearms makers’ attorneys argued that there are no existing proximate cause textbook examples for such a situation that can be cited, and Mexico cannot prove a “decades-long criminal conspiracy hiding in plain sight” involving firearms trafficking. “Mere generalized knowledge that some unknown fraction of the products will be used or sold illegally does not make the supplier a felon,” it concluded.
Arguments will be held on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, with live audio available on the Court’s website at www.supremecourt.gov.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
