Supreme Court Justices Sound Skeptical of Mexico’s $10 Billion Gun Lawsuit

Mexico would like the Supreme Court to force US gun manufacturers to pay as much as $10 billion for contributing to the violence of Mexican drug cartels. SCOTUSblog has the backstory to this case:

Mexico has very strict gun laws that make it almost impossible for criminals to obtain a gun legally there. There is only one gun store in the whole country, and the government issues fewer than 50 gun permits per year. But Mexico ranks third in the world in the number of gun-related deaths. In 2021, 69% of homicides were committed with a gun. Mexico contends that as many as 70 to 90% of the guns that police recover at crime scenes in the country were trafficked into Mexico from the United States.

Mexico filed a lawsuit in 2021 in federal court in Massachusetts. It contended, among other things, that supplying guns to Mexico’s illegal gun market is a feature, rather than a bug, of the gun makers’ business models…

The district court dismissed Mexico’s case. It ruled that Mexico’s claims were barred by a federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, intended to shield the U.S. gun industry from lawsuits in U.S. courts for the misuse of guns by others. The law was enacted in response to a series of lawsuits in the 1990s by (among others) cities seeking to hold the gun industry for harms caused by gun violence.

The 1st Circuit reversed the lower court decision at which point the gun companies appealed to the Supreme Court last April. The Court agreed to hear the case last September.

Today oral arguments in the case were held and the justices did not seem inclined to accept the argument that gun companies were aiding and abetting cartel crime.

Both liberal and conservative justices appeared skeptical that the claims could clear hurdles in U.S. law that largely shield gun makers from lawsuits when their products are used in crime…

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said it appeared that the lawsuit ultimately seeks “changes to the firearm industry” of the kind that the shield law was aiming to forestall.

Justice Samuel Alito raised questions about whether U.S. states could file suit against Mexico for “illegal conduct” it links to activities there.

A lawyer for Mexico argued that the manufacturers were trying to market some guns to cartel buyers.

During the argument, Catherine E. Stetson, the lawyer who argued for Mexico, said some U.S. manufacturers have designed specific weapons to appeal to Mexican buyers. In court filings, lawyers for Mexico referred to a special edition .38 pistol engraved with the face of the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata with a quotation that has been attributed to him: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”

Noel J. Francisco, the attorney for the gun industry, countered that there are millions of Spanish speaking Americans in the US and therefore marketing a gun with a Mexican name or Spanish-language quote isn’t necessarily targeting criminals on the other side of the border.

But the key point made in opposition to the case was that a ruling in favor of Mexico would open up manufacturers of just about everything under the sun to similar lawsuits.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared to sum up doubts about the lawsuit by asking about the broader implications if Mexico succeeded in arguing that manufacturers acting lawfully could be held responsible for illegal behavior by cartels, an outcome that he worried could have “destructive effects on the American economy.”

“Lots of sellers and manufacturers of ordinary products know that they’re going to be misused by some subset of people,” Justice Kavanaugh said, citing carmakers and pharmaceutical companies.

Car manufacturers also know their products will be abused in some cases and that people will kill themselves or others as a result (speeding, drunk driving, etc.). But we don’t allow a class action lawsuit aimed at all carmakers on that basis. Francisco, the gun industry attorney used Budweiser as an example.

“If Mexico is right…then Budweiser is liable for every accident caused by underage drinkers since it knows that teenagers will buy beer, drive drunk, and crash.”…

Stetson countered with her own version of Francisco’s Budweiser example, noting that if Budweiser was alleged to have a practice of selling bulk quantities of Bud Light to stores located near high schools, and if Bud Light “put out a new can that says ‘Best Prom Ever’ and sold it right into the high school, that is the allegation in this case.”

Despite Stetson’s skilled advocacy, she had a tough time selling her argument, with conservatives and liberals alike indicating significant doubts.

We won’t get a decision until this summer but it sounds like the only question is how many of the liberals will join the conservative majority in putting an end to this case.