1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Supreme Court appears likely to rule against…

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court appears likely to rule against Mexico in suit against gun-makers for cartel violence

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 5, 2025, 12:46 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to side with U.S. gun companies arguing that Mexico cannot sue over the flow of firearms into the country because of a 2005 law providing gun-makers with immunity for third-party crimes committed with their products.

“After a nearly two-hour argument,” the Washington Post reports, “a majority of justices—if not a unanimous court—appeared likely to block the lawsuit from proceeding, with several suggesting Mexico had not shown a close enough connection between guns made in the United States and drug cartel violence.”

Several other publications also reported that the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic to gun company arguments, including Reuters, the New York Times, CNN and SCOTUSblog.

Mexico argues that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act does not shield gun companies because they sell to “red-flag dealers” known for illegally selling to straw purchasers who traffic guns across the border. Mexico’s suit seeks injunctive relief and about $10 billion in damages, according to an ABA Journal case preview.

The suit cites a provision in the law that allows civil liability when businesses knowingly violate a state or a federal law regarding the sale or marketing of firearms or when the the companies aid and abet the violation. The violation must also be the proximate cause of the harm—in this case, drug cartel violence—that is the basis of the suit.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Boston had allowed Mexico to pursue the suit.

Suit defendants Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms, a gun distributor, asked the Supreme Court to overturn the 1st Circuit’s decision. Initial defendants included seven firearms manufacturers and one wholesaler, but a federal judge dismissed six of them for lack of personal jurisdiction while the cert petition was pending, according to a brief filed by the gun companies.

Noel J. Francisco, a Jones Day partner and a former U.S. solicitor general during President Donald Trump’s first term, argued for the companies.

Mexico “asserts that defendants are liable for every illegal sale by every retailer in America because they know that a small percentage of firearms are sold illegally and don’t do more to stop it,” he said. “If Mexico is right, then every law enforcement organization in America has missed the largest criminal conspiracy in history operating right under their nose, and Budweiser is liable for every accident caused by underage drinkers since it knows that teenagers will buy beer, drive drunk and crash.”

In an exchange with Catherine Stetson, a lawyer for the Mexican government, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the suit does not contend that gun companies violate any U.S. laws.

Instead, the suit allegations “just go to whether or not the defendant had knowledge that at the end of the day, … some dealers might be doing something wrong,” Jackson said.

The case is Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

The SCOTUSblog case page is here.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used…

Constitutional Law

This ‘reinvigorated’ doctrine could be used to challenge Trump’s tariffs

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 5, 2025, 11:59 am CST

Importers and others who want to challenge tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump could argue that he doesn’t have that power—but the argument isn’t a slam dunk, legal experts say.

Trump has cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, a law giving presidents authority to restrict trade in some circumstances, as authority for his power to impose tariffs. At issue is whether the IEEPA gives Trump that power and whether the “major questions doctrine” leads to the conclusion that it does not, Bloomberg Law reports.

Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on imports from China, but he paused threatened tariffs of 25% on goods from Canada and Mexico. Trump said tariffs are needed because of “the grave threat to the United States posed by the influx of illegal aliens and illicit drugs” at the borders, creating a national emergency.

Under the major questions doctrine, Congress must “speak clearly” when authorizing an executive branch agency to make decisions of vast economic and political significance, wrote Ilya Somin, a professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, at the Volokh Conspiracy. If a statute is ambiguous, the presumption is that the power was not granted.

The major questions doctrine has been “reinvigorated” by the U.S. Supreme Court in striking down the federal eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomberg Law says.

The Supreme Court also cited the doctrine when it ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t have broad power to regulate climate change and that the Biden administration didn’t have the power to forgive student loans.

Somin argued that imposing “massive tariffs” is “pretty obviously” a decision with vast economic and political significance with high costs to the public. And the statute under which Trump claimed authority is far from clear, as were the statutes in the student loan and eviction moratorium cases, he wrote.

The IEEPA is a “vague statute” that authorizes presidents to restrict trade when there is “any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States, if the president declares a national emergency with respect to such threat,” Somin wrote.

Peter E. Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also sees an argument regarding the major questions doctrine, particularly for “universal baseline” tariffs imposing a specific percentage charge on all imports.

“Courts should find that allowing Trump to waive his magic sharpie to sign an IEEPA executive order imposing tariffs would upset the balance Congress has long sought to strike when it delegates its tariff authority to the president,” he wrote in a Lawfare post.

Apart from the major questions doctrine, an argument could be made that the plain text of the IEEPA doesn’t give presidents tariff authority, Harrell wrote.

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to set tariffs and regulate commerce with foreign nations. A president’s power to set tariffs comes from delegated authority by Congress, Harrell wrote. The IEEPA gives a president the power to ban or limit exports and imports, but the list “notably” does not explicitly include the power to impose tariffs or taxes.

Saikrishna Prakash, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told Bloomberg Law that the opposite argument is that the broad powers granted by the law should include the lesser power of imposing tariffs.

The “IEEPA allows a very broad power to ban commerce, and so given that, why can’t the president do something less?” Prakash asks.

Somin sees yet another argument that the the nondelegation doctrine applies. It allows broad delegations of power when they are based on an “intelligible principle.” Some Supreme Court justices have expressed interest in “tightening up” the doctrine, and a tariff challenge “might be a good opportunity to do just that,” he wrote.

Somin doesn’t argue that a challenge to tariffs is likely to succeed.

“But the arguments are strong,” he wrote, particularly those in support of the major questions doctrine.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Judge accuses high-profile law firms of possible…

Trials & Litigation

Judge accuses high-profile law firms of possible effort to ‘gum up the works’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 22, 2024, 12:49 pm CDT

A federal judge in Boston complained during a status conference Friday that lawyers from three high-profile law firms had filed so many motions and documents that they were failing to keep litigation just, speedy and inexpensive, as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts scolded 11 lawyers involved in litigation over the sale of a Mexican funeral company.

Law360 has the story, summarized by Above the Law.

On the one side are lawyers from Boies Schiller Flexner, who represent Servicios Funerarios GG, a Mexican company alleging that it was misled about the financial condition of a funeral business that it bought.

On the other side are lawyers with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and with Ropes & Gray. They represent the Advent International Corp., a U.S. private equity investment company with control of the entities that owned the funeral business before its sale.

After Servicios Funerarios filed the fraud lawsuit, the Advent International Corp. filed counterclaims claiming that it was being extorted.

Talwani said the document-heavy litigation appeared to be “an effort to try to gum up the works.” Law360 published her comments.

“I don’t understand how 11 lawyers can jointly make what we are doing here difficult,” Talwani said. “It is not serving you well—your clients paying your bills—and I do want you to pass this message to your client: In order to try to keep your bills down, it would be helpful to try and figure out whether there are some things that don’t have to be fought about.”

“That might serve your clients,” Talwani said. “It might not serve your pocketbooks, and you can tell your clients that was my comment.”

Talwani spoke after the two sides were unable to agree on a litigation timeline. However, the issues extend beyond the Massachusetts case.

“The litigation has proved complicated,” Law360 reports, “as arrest warrants were filed against Advent personnel in the U.S. and Mexico.”

In addition, a related suit in Delaware chancery court sought to enforce terms of the sale agreement.

Carlos Sires of Boies Schiller Flexner told Law360 that its client “shares the court’s frustration and requested the conference because it wanted to address the delays caused by [the Advent International Corp.’s] objections to the depositions of some of its key employees involved in the [funeral home] transaction.”

Lawyers with Quinn Emanuel and Ropes & Gray did not immediately provide a comment to the ABA Journal in response to its emailed request.