US Supreme Court rebuffs challenge to New York law allowing suits against gun industry
By Jonathan Stempel
June 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected the gun industry’s challenge to a New York law that allows lawsuits against gun manufacturers, wholesalers and dealers for endangering people’s safety through the sale of firearms and ammunition.
The justices refused to hear an appeal by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group, of a lower court decision upholding the law, which New York called a public nuisance law. The group argued that the law unconstitutionally conflicts with federal law.
Arms companies such as Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer and Sturm participated in the call.
The Supreme Court in 2025 cleared Smith & Wesson from a lawsuit in which the Mexican government accused the company of helping smuggle illegal weapons to drug cartels.
The New York law, signed by former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021, requires the gun industry to take reasonable precautions to protect against gun trafficking, theft and the use of “straw buyers” who buy firearms for someone else. Civil lawsuits are permitted by New York state and local officials as well as the public.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the law is blocked by a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields the gun industry from civil liability when its products are used in crimes.
Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, federal laws take precedence over state laws that conflict with them.
The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the New York law last year.
Circuit Judge Eunice Lee, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, wrote that Congress intended to preserve “at least some cause of action” in cases where a defendant’s knowing violation of federal or state firearms sales and marketing laws is a proximate cause of harm.
Likewise, Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs, an appointee of Republican former President George H. W. Bush, acknowledged that the New York law was not exclusive, but accused state lawmakers of “drafting a broad public nuisance law that applies only to members of the gun industry and is enforceable by a group of public and private actors.”
‘OVERWhelming’ RESPONSIBILITY
The appeal was not based on the Constitution’s Second Amendment protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But the trade group said laws like New York’s jeopardize such rights by allowing lawsuits that could impose “overwhelming liability” on companies for crimes they had nothing to do with.
“This Court’s review is sorely needed to ensure that states hostile to Second Amendment rights do not obstruct the exercise of those rights by seeking to bankrupt members of the licensed (and tightly regulated) industry that makes the exercise of those constitutional rights possible,” the justices wrote.
The group also said that the so-called “premise exception” in that federal law subjects the industry to liability only for failure to comply with certain obligations or prohibitions under its control.
“The following decision blows a gaping hole in the law Congress passed to protect the firearms industry from exactly the kind of lawsuits that New York aims to reopen,” the group said, citing the 2nd Circuit decision.
SUPREME COURT DECISION
New York said the decision was consistent with the Supreme Court decision in the Mexico case and that the predicate exception allows liability for certain “downstream acts” of third parties.
He also said at least nine states have passed laws to meet that exception, and that the Supreme Court should allow challenges to proceed through the courts rather than declare New York’s law unconstitutional on all counts.
The gun industry’s call was supported in filings by the National Rifle Association, 24 Republican state attorneys general and several dozen Republican members of Congress.
The Supreme Court has expanded gun rights in three landmark decisions since 2008, when it found that the Second Amendment provides an individual with the right to keep and bear arms.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
