The lawsuit mounted a challenge to the immunity Congress granted gun companies to shield them from litigation when their weapons are used in a crime. The ruling allows the case, brought by victims’ families, to maneuver around the federal shield, creating a potential opening to bring claims to trial and hold the companies, including Remington, which made the rifle, liable for the attack.
The decision represents a significant development in the long-running battle between gun control advocates and the gun lobby. And it stands to have wider ramifications, experts said, by charting a possible legal road map for victims’ relatives and survivors from other mass shootings who want to sue gun companies.
In the lawsuit, the families seized upon the marketing for the AR-15-style Bushmaster used in the 2012 attack, which invoked the violence of combat and used slogans like “Consider your man card reissued.”
Lawyers for the families argued those messages reflected a deliberate effort to appeal to troubled young men like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who charged into the elementary school and killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, in a spray of gunfire.
In the 4-3 ruling, the justices agreed with a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss most of the claims raised by the families, but also found the sweeping federal protections did not prevent the families from bringing a lawsuit based on wrongful marketing claims. The court ruled the case can move ahead based on a state law regarding unfair trade practices.
“I am thrilled and tremendously grateful,” said Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed in his first-grade classroom. “No one has blanket immunity. There are consequences.”
Lawyers representing the gun companies argued the claims raised in the lawsuit were specifically the kind that federal law inoculated them against. In oral arguments, lawyers for the companies argued the weapons were marketed as being used for home defense and target practice, and not to commit violence.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.