(CNN) – The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law prevents Mexico from suing gun dealers for allegedly facilitating the flow of firearms to drug cartels.
The high court on Friday granted a request by Smith & Wesson and other manufacturers to review a federal appeals court ruling that revived the case after a lower court judge dismissed it based on the Lawful Trade Protection Act. Guns, a law that generally prohibits civil liability of firearms manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by criminal third parties.
In all, the Supreme Court on Friday granted 13 cases, rounding out the term that begins Monday with disputes over reverse discrimination, the storage of spent nuclear fuel and DNA testing for a death row inmate.
In its lawsuit, Mexico alleged that the manufacturers and distributors were aiding and abetting the purchase of their weapons by distributors known to supply drug cartels. They also claim that gun manufacturers have resisted making changes to their products, such as making gun serial numbers more difficult to tamper with or installing certain technological safeguards that would make unauthorized use of a gun more difficult, which would make that weapons were less attractive to criminal gangs.
And the complaint says the manufacturers market their products in a “provocative” and “reckless” manner that makes the weapons more attractive to cartels.
At the center of the dispute before the Supreme Court is the 2005 federal law passed by a Congress led by the Republican Party. The ruling in favor of Mexico came after gun manufacturers had previous success in using the Lawful Commerce in Arms Protection Act to stop similar lawsuits from state and local governments.
The First Circuit concluded that Mexico’s suit could proceed because it fell under an exemption that allows liability when the alleged harm is related to violations by the gun manufacturer or distributor of state or local law.
In seeking to have that ruling overturned, the manufacturers are challenging Mexico’s allegations that they were aiding and abetting illegal sales of their guns in violation of U.S. federal law. They point to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that protected to Twitter of a lawsuit alleging that it aided and abetted terrorism by hosting tweets created by the terrorist group ISIS.
Lawyers for Mexico, who asked the Court not to alter the First Circuit’s ruling, defended the logic of the ruling and argued that it was premature for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.
