The US Supreme Court decides whether Mexico can sue gun manufacturers over border violence

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The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law bars Mexico from charging gun distributors with facilitating the flow of firearms to drug cartels.

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the request of Smith & Wesson and other weapons manufacturers to review a federal appeals court ruling reviving the case after a judge dismissed the case under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a law that generally limits civil liability of firearms manufacturers and distributors for the use of their products by external criminals.

The Supreme Court on Friday assigned 13 cases, filling the term that begins Monday with new disputes over reverse discrimination, spent fuel storage and DNA testing for a death row inmate. The court had already agreed to hear cases involving President Joe Biden’s regulation of “ghost guns” and vaping.

The court will reconvene for the first time since the 6-3 conservative majority in July granted sweeping criminal immunity to former President Donald Trump, further limited the power of federal agencies and lifted a ban on bump stocks.

In its lawsuit, Mexico alleged that the manufacturers and distributors aided and abetted the purchase of their firearms by dealers known to supply drug cartels. They also allege that firearms manufacturers have resisted making changes to their products — such as making it more difficult to identify gun serial numbers or installing certain technological safeguards that would prevent the unauthorized use of a gun — that would make the guns less attractive for criminal gangs.

And the complaint says manufacturers market their products in a “inflammatory” and “reckless” manner, making guns more attractive to cartels.

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

The 1st Circuit concluded that the Mexico lawsuit could proceed because it fell under an exemption that allowed liability when the alleged harm was related to the gun maker or distributor’s violations of state or local law.

In their effort to overturn that ruling, the manufacturers dispute Mexico’s allegations that they aided and abetted the illegal sale of their weapons in violation of federal law. They point to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling protecting Twitter from a lawsuit alleging it aided and abetted terrorism by hosting tweets created by the terror group ISIS.

Lawyers for Mexico, who asked the court not to disrupt the 1st Circuit’s ruling, defended the ruling’s rationale and argued it was premature for the Supreme Court to hear the case.

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

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

Ames is challenging the requirement in five appellate courts across the country that the “majority” of Americans filing discrimination claims must prove “background circumstances” to proceed with their lawsuit. A plaintiff could meet this requirement, for example, by providing statistical evidence showing a pattern of discrimination against members of a majority group.

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

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

Spent fuel and the doctrine of big questions

The Supreme Court will also enter a decades-long battle over how — and where — spent fuel should be stored, in a case that could have resonance for the power of federal agencies.

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

The case will return an important issue to the Supreme Court that centers on resolving ambiguities about a doctrine it created that limits the power of federal agencies in situations where Congress has not granted express authority for an action, known as the doctrine of the big questions.

The case will be decided months after the Supreme Court delivered a significant blow to the power of federal agencies in a separate case centering on when courts can review agencies’ actions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission argued that Texas should not have brought the case to federal court at all because the state did not 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 permits to store nuclear fuel outside of reactors.

The court agreed Friday to hear an appeal from a Texas death row inmate who was denied the opportunity to request a DNA test after his conviction, putting the death penalty on the death row for the second time this year. agenda of the Supreme Court.

Ruben Gutierrez was convicted of murder and related crimes in the murder of Escolastica Harrison more than twenty-five years ago and was sentenced in 1999. He was denied the opportunity to request additional post-conviction DNA testing under a Texas law in effect. issue in the case.

After a wave of executions across the country in recent weeks — several of which the Supreme Court refused to halt — the justices will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a separate death penalty case involving an Oklahoma man who is even facing the death penalty. must be spared.

The court was criticized in late September by anti-death penalty advocates for refusing to intervene in the case of Marcellus Williams, who was convicted in 2001 of killing former journalist Felicia Gayle.

The court refused to halt the execution, over the objection of the three liberal judges. Williams’ conviction was questioned by the same office that prosecuted him.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional developments.