In a major victory for conservatives, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Mexican government on Thursday in the country’s lawsuit against American gun manufacturers.
Mexico filed a lawsuit against seven U.S.-based gun manufacturers in 2021, claiming that the businesses were lax and, therefore, paved the way for the trafficking of firearms to fall into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico, leading crime to soar.
Mexico sought billions in damages, claiming that the seven companies were aware of the trafficking taking place and did little to nothing to prevent it.
However, the High Court has struck down Mexico’s lawsuit, saying that it violates the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
In the court’s majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan pointed out that Mexico’s claim was not enough to strip the gun manufacturers of the PLCAA.
“As required by a federal statute, Mexico seeks to show (among other things) that the defendant companies participated in the unlawful sale or marketing of firearms,” Kagan wrote.
“More specifically, Mexico alleges that the companies aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not,” she added.
As Trending Politics reported, PLCAA was passed by Congress in 2005.
The law protects gun companies in the U.S. from civil lawsuits, where they could be held liable for crimes committed with their weapons.
Mexico claimed that the seven gun companies “knowingly violated” statutes surrounding the selling or marketing of their weapons, per Trending Politics.
“But that exception, if Mexico’s suit fell within it, would swallow most of the rule,” Kagan said. “We doubt Congress intended to draft such a capacious way out of PLCAA, and in fact it did not.”
“Mexico has not met that bar,” she added. “Its complaint does not plausibly allege the kind of ‘conscious…and culpable participation in another’s wrongdoing’ needed to make out an aiding-and-abetting charge.”
“When a company merely knows that some bad actors are taking advantage of its products for criminal purposes, it does not aid and abet. And that is so even if the company could adopt measures to reduce their users’ downstream crimes,” she concluded.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, the legal adviser for Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the country is “disappointed,” as ABC News reported.
“The Mexican Government will continue to do everything in its power to protect Mexicans and to stop the crime gun pipeline,” Pablo Arrocha Olabuenaga said.
The president of Global Action on Gun Violence Jonathan Lowey supported Mexico in the case.
Lowey said he would continue working with the Mexican government “to stop the crime gun pipeline.”
He said that the court’s decision is “the clearest evidence yet that the gun industry’s special interest get-out-court-free card must be revoked.”
