Supreme Court rebuffs challenge to NY law allowing lawsuits against gun industry

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away on Monday a gun industry challenge to a New York law that permits lawsuits against gun makers, wholesalers and dealers for endangering people’s safety through sales of firearms and ammunition.

The justices declined to hear an appeal by an industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, of a lower court ruling upholding the law, which New York calls a public nuisance statute.

Gun manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer and Sturm, joined the appeal, which argued that New York’s law unconstitutionally conflicted with federal law. 

The law requires the gun industry to use reasonable safeguards to protect against gun trafficking, theft and the use of “straw purchasers” who buy firearms for someone else. It also allows civil lawsuits by New York state and local officials, as well as members of the public.

The Supreme Court in 2025 spared Smith & Wesson from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government, accusing the company of aiding illegal gun trafficking to drug cartels.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation trade group expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court decided not to hear its appeal.

“NSSF sincerely believes that those criminals who illegally misuse lawful products should be held responsible for the harms they cause when they commit their crimes,” spokesperson Mark Oliva said in an email. “Holding the firearm industry responsible for the criminal misuse of a firearm is akin to holding Anheuser-Busch and Ford Motor Company responsible for damages from drunk-driving crimes.”

Letitia James, New York’s Democratic attorney general, defended the law in court, and New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul called the outcome “a massive victory” in efforts to reduce gun violence. The law was signed in 2021 by Hochul’s predecessor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

“The gun lobby fought tooth and nail against this first-in-the-nation law,” Hochul said in a statement. “New York will not allow gun manufacturers to profit from tragedy.”

The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the law was preempted by a 2005 federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that shields the gun industry from civil liability when its products are used in crimes. Under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, federal laws take precedence over conflicting state laws. 

The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New York’s law last year.

Circuit Judge Eunice Lee, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, wrote that Congress intended to preserve “at least some causes of action” when a defendant’s knowing violation of federal or state firearms sales and marketing laws was a proximate cause of harm.

The appeal did not hinge on the Constitution’s Second Amendment protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But the trade group said laws such as New York’s imperil such rights by allowing lawsuits that could saddle companies with “crushing liability” for crimes they had nothing to do with.

It also said a “predicate exception” in the federal law at issue subjected the industry to liability only for failures to comply with specific obligations or prohibitions within its control.

New York said the predicate exception allowed liability for some “downstream acts” of third parties. It also said at least nine states have passed laws to satisfy the exception.

The appeal was supported 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 major decisions since 2008, when it found that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.

In other court moves on Monday:

▪ The court agreed to hear a Trump administration appeal and decide if “criminal aliens” may be held indefinitely while they fight deportation.

The case to be heard in the fall could give the administration more power to arrest and hold immigrants, including green card holders, who have criminal records.

The government’s lawyers say immigration laws call for deporting noncitizens with “aggravated felonies” on their records. And in such cases, they say these people may be held for months or even years while their claims are before the immigration courts.

Judges have been split on whether noncitizens fighting deportation have a right to a bond hearing and a chance to go free if they pose no risk to public safety.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled for a pair of green card holders who faced deportation to the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Both had been convicted of assaults that were characterized as aggravated felonies under the immigration laws.

However, the appeals court said their “prolonged detention” was unconstitutional if they were given no bond hearing and no chance to go free.

They were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers urged the court to turn down the appeal.

“For the first time in this litigation, the government argues that civil detention ‘does not implicate any fundamental rights’ and so the Due Process Clause affords the detained men no protections-substantive or procedural,” they wrote.

In the past, they said the Supreme Court had accepted the “bedrock principle” that detained persons may have a right to seek their release on bond.

One of the two men had left this country and returned to Jamaica, the ACLU lawyers said. But Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to rule on the issue.

The detained men “have no procedural due-process right to a bond hearing on whether they are a flight risk or danger to the community,” he told the court. “Individualized findings about flight risk and danger are irrelevant” under the immigration laws, which called for “mandatory detention based on their aggravated-felony convictions alone.”

▪ The justices declined to hear a former high school student’s free-speech challenge to an Indiana public school district’s policy that barred her from displaying a flyer with an anti-abortion message on school walls.

The court turned away the former student’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Noblesville Schools district’s policy did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech.

The former student, who has since graduated, is known in court papers as “E.D.” due to her status as a minor when her parents, Michael and Lisa Duell, filed the 2021 lawsuit against the school district, which is located outside Indianapolis.

The dispute arose in connection with an anti-abortion student club called Noblesville Students for Life, a local chapter of Students for Life of America, that E.D. formed during her freshman year at Noblesville High School.

The school approved the formation of the group and permitted the girl to advertise it at an activities fair during which she displayed a table-top poster with the group’s mission statement and a sign that stated, “I am the pro-life generation.” She also wore a shirt bearing the same slogan.

But the school prevented her from hanging on school walls flyers that included photographs of students in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington carrying signs that read, “I Reject Abortion,” “Defund Planned Parenthood,” “I Am the Pro-Life Generation,” and other similar messages.

The school has said its policy “categorically prohibited political content in flyers posted on its walls.”

A school official told the girl that student group flyers appearing on school walls should contain only the club’s name and the location, time and date of its meeting, but not photographs of signage, according to court papers.

According to court papers filed by the school, the girl and her mother then sought approval for the same flyer from a different school administrator. The mother’s involvement fueled concerns among school officials that the group was not truly student-led, prompting the club’s suspension for the rest of the semester, the school’s court papers said.

The former student filed a lawsuit in response to the denial of her proposed flyers and her club’s revocation. She said in court papers that an administrator expressed concerns about the political nature of flyers, especially the “Defund Planned Parenthood” signage.

The girl is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs.

The dispute implicates a 1988 Supreme Court ruling in a case from Missouri called Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In that case, the court ruled that schools may restrict student speech in channels that are not deemed “public forums” or where the speech at issue is inconsistent with the school’s educational mission.

An Indianapolis-based federal judge in 2024 sided with Noblesville Schools, finding the district was authorized to regulate the content of student flyers displayed on school walls. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2025, prompting the girl’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s decision denying the appeal, writing that the justices should have used the opportunity to revisit the 1988 decision in the Hazelwood case.

▪ The court declined to hear a challenge by Macy’s to a National Labor Relations Board decision requiring the retailer to compensate employees whom the company fired in a case in which the company sought to roll back the agency’s power to order such action.

Macy’s had appealed a lower court’s decision upholding the labor board’s action. Macy’s had asked the justices to resolve a split among federal appeals courts over the NLRB’s authority to require that companies found to have illegally fired employees make those workers whole for any related financial losses.

The NLRB in 2023, during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, decided that Macy’s acted unlawfully when it locked out and fired about 60 unionized building engineers in Nevada and California after they ended a strike over stalled contract negotiations. It also required Macy’s to post notices informing workers of their rights.

The board ordered Macy’s to reimburse the workers for any monetary harms caused when they were fired, and said it would determine at a later time whether any further remedies were appropriate.

The NLRB in a 2022 decision involving Thryv, a small business marketing software company, said it would begin ordering employers to reimburse workers for “direct and foreseeable” financial losses stemming from a company’s illegal conduct, such as credit card fees or out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Previously, the only monetary remedies the board ordered in cases involving unlawful labor practices were lost pay and benefits. But in the Thryv case, a Democratic board majority said that practice had for decades been shortchanging workers whose lives can be upended if they are unlawfully disciplined or fired.

Macy’s is one of dozens of businesses that have challenged the expanded remedies, claiming that they are no different than the compensatory damages typically sought in private lawsuits. Macy’s said that such remedies by the NLRB violate the right spelled out in the U.S. Constitution to a jury trial, in this instance to have jurors rather than a government agency decide whether they owe damages.

After Macy’s challenged the NLRB’s action, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the agency has discretion to award remedies that vindicate the public interest by restoring the status quo that existed before an employer broke the law.

Three other federal appeals courts have disagreed, ruling that Congress intentionally limited the scope of the board’s authority to matters directly involving the application of federal labor law.

▪ The court declined to hear a bid by the nation’s oldest federal judge, 98-year-old Pauline Newman, to overturn her suspension from duties in 2023 during an investigation into her fitness to serve.

The justices turned away Newman’s appeal of a lower court’s decision to reject her legal challenge to her suspension from the Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Newman had argued that the Federal Circuit violated her constitutional rights by suspending her and is seeking reinstatement.

Newman, a respected figure in patent law, was appointed in 1984 by Republican President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Circuit. It handles patent appeals nationwide and frequently rules in intellectual property cases involving major companies.

A panel of Federal Circuit judges cited staff reports of Newman’s “memory loss, confusion, paranoia and angry rants” in documents released by the court in 2023. A council of all of the court’s active judges, led by Chief Judge Kimberly Moore, unanimously voted to suspend Newman later that year after finding that she refused to cooperate with an investigation into her fitness.

The Federal Circuit’s suspension of Newman remains in place.

Newman has maintained that she is fit to serve and sued Moore and the council in federal court in Washington. A judge dismissed Newman’s case in 2024 after finding that courts have “consistently affirmed the judiciary’s authority to police itself.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that ruling in 2025.

The Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States, part of the federal judiciary’s governing body, also has upheld Newman’s suspension.

The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 4:52 PM.