The Supreme Court decided on Monday morning not to consider the request by gun manufacturer Remington Arms to stop the case against them by the Sandy Hook families.

In March, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the families can sue Remington “under state law over its marketing practices, citing one of the few exemptions to the federal law.”

A 2005 federal law, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), states gun manufacturers can receive “legal immunity when their products are used in a crime.” It has many exemptions, “including when the actions of the firearms manufacturer ‘knowingly violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product.'”

The families insist that Remington violated state law “by marketing the AR-15-style rifle ‘for civilians to use to carry out offensive, military-style combat missions against their perceived enemies.'”

Remington appealed the state’s decision to the Supreme Court. In its Writ of Certiorari, Remington claimed:

The decision will have immediate and severe consequences, exposing the firearms industry to costly and burdensome litigation based on theories of liability virtually indistinguishable from those that motivated the PLCAA’s enactment. States across the nation have broad consumer protection statutes comparable to CUTPA. Thus, as a leading scholar on firearm-manufacturer liability has explained, the decision below will “unleash a flood of lawsuits across the country.” — Allowing this case simply to proceed will inflict on the firearms industry the very harm the PLCAA was meant to address—massive, unsustainable litigation expenses, which threaten to destroy an industry that makes lawful products whose possession and use the Constitution specifically protects. Only this Court’s immediate review can avoid that consequence.

Since the high court declined to take up the case, the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision remains.



