US Supreme Court to decide if Mexico may sue gunmakers for border violence

The US Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law prevents Mexico from suing gun distributors for allegedly facilitating the flow of firearms to drug cartels.

The high court on Friday granted the request by Smith & Wesson and other manufacturers to review a federal appeals court ruling reviving the case, after a trial judge threw it out on the basis of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law that generally bars civil liability for firearm manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by third-party criminals.

In all, on Friday the Supreme Court granted 13 cases, filling out the term that will begin on Monday with disputes dealing with reverse discrimination, the storage of spent nuclear fuel and DNA testing for a death row inmate.

In its lawsuit, Mexico alleged the manufacturers and distributors were aiding and abetting the purchase of their firearms by dealers known to supply drug cartels. They also claim that firearm makers have resisted making changes to their products – such as making gun serial numbers harder to tamper with or installing certain technological safeguards that would hinder a gun’s unauthorized use – that would make the guns less appealing to criminal gangs.

And the complaint says manufacturers market their products in a “inflammatory” and “reckless” way that makes guns more attractive to cartels.

At the heart of the dispute before the Supreme Court is the 2005 federal law passed by a GOP-led Congress. The ruling in Mexico’s favor came after gunmakers had previous success in using the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to stop similar lawsuits from local and state governments.

The 1st Circuit concluded the Mexico lawsuit could go forward because it fell under an exemption allowing liability when the alleged harm is connected to violations by the gun maker or distributor of state or local law.

In seeking to have that ruling overturn, the manufacturers are contesting Mexico’s allegations that they were aiding and abetting the illegal sales of their arms in violation of federal law. They point to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling shielding Twitter from a lawsuit alleging it aided and abetted terrorism by hosting tweets created by the terror group ISIS.

Lawyers for Mexico, which asked the court not to disturb the 1st Circuit’s ruling, defended the ruling’s rationale and argued that it was premature for the Supreme Court to take up the case.

As recent Supreme Court rulings on workplace discrimination continue to ripple through lower courts, the justices also agreed Friday to take up the case of a woman who claims she missed a promotion because she is heterosexual and her boss was gay.

Marlean Ames started working for Ohio’s state government in 2004 and steadily rose through the ranks at the Department of Youth Services. She claims that in 2017 she started reporting to a gay boss and was passed over for a promotion that was offered to another gay woman.

Ames is challenging a requirement applied in five appeals courts across the country that “majority” Americans raising discrimination claims must demonstrate “background circumstances” in order to pursue their lawsuit. A plaintiff might meet that requirement, for instance, by providing statistical evidence documenting a pattern of discrimination against members of a majority group.

Ames lost at the Cincinnati-based 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals. If she wins her case, it could make it easier for American to bring so-called reverse discrimination suits.

Ohio officials counter that the department had “legitimate, nondiscriminatory, reasons for hiring someone” else and that Ames never provided evidence showing that managers were even aware of her sexual orientation.

Spent nuclear fuel and major questions doctrine

The Supreme Court will also wade into a decades-old battle over how – and where – to store spent nuclear fuel, in a case that could have reverberations for federal agency power.

The Biden administration appealed a decision from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed Texas to challenge a Nuclear Regulatory Commission plan to store as much as 40,000 metric tons of nuclear waste on the Permian Basin in Texas.

The case will bring back to the high court a significant issue dealing with how to resolve ambiguities over a doctrine it created that limits the power of federal agencies in situations where Congress has not granted explicit authority for an action, known as the major questions doctrine.

The case will be decided months after the Supreme Court delivered a significant blow to the power of federal agencies in a separate case dealing with when courts may review agency actions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission argued that Texas shouldn’t have been permitted to bring the case into federal court at all because the state didn’t formally object to the plan when the agency first awarded the storage license to Interim Storage Partners, a private company. The agency is also fighting the 5th Circuit’s ruling that the agency does not have the authority to issue licenses to store nuclear fuel away from reactors.

This story has been updated with additional developments.