(The Center Square) — A federal appeals court has tossed out a lawsuit challenging New Jersey’s “public nuisance” gun control law that allows the state to file lawsuits against firearm manufacturers and marketers.
The ruling issued Friday by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the law, which authorizes the attorney general to file lawsuits against the gun industry if it “knowingly or recklessly contribute to a public nuisance” by failing to maintain “reasonable controls” on the sale, manufacturing, distribution, importing, or marketing of gun-related products.
The decision by the three-judge panel also lifts an injunction against the New Jersey law issued last year by a federal court judge.
A lawsuit filed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation argued that the 2022 law is unconstitutional because Congress barred “baseless lawsuits” against gun makers in 2005, when it passed the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which gave firearm manufacturers and sellers broad immunity from most litigation.
“But we see little evidence that enforcement is looming,” the appellate court wrote in its 16-page ruling. “Because the foundation has jumped the gun, its challenge must be dismissed.”
Gov. Phil Murphy said he was “thrilled” about the ruling upholding the law, which he says will “hold bad actors in the firearms industry accountable for dangerous sales and marketing practices.”
Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin also praised the ruling, which he said will hold accountable “those whose unlawful conduct causes bloodshed, and fuels the gun violence epidemic, for the sake of their bottom line.”
“Our law never should have been enjoined, and now it will be back in effect in its entirety,” Platkin said.
Platkin and other New Jersey officials say the state’s tough firearm safety laws have helped it maintain one of the lowest firearm mortality rates in the country.
But they point out there are still hundreds of gun-related deaths each year in the state, which has also seen mass shootings including a 2019 incident where two individuals targeted a kosher market in Hudson County in an attack that claimed the lives of six people, including a Jersey City police officer.
New Jersey is also facing a legal challenge over a 2022 law that prevents licensed firearm owners from carrying guns in at least 25 “sensitive places” like government buildings, libraries, public transportation and day care centers.
The foundation, a Connecticut-based firearms trade group, has also filed a similar federal lawsuit against Delaware, President Joe Biden’s home state, which enacted a similar public nuisance law last year. The outcome of that case is still pending.
The group said the federal PLCAA law “keeps activist lawyers from placing the blame on members of the firearm industry” for the criminal misuse of lawfully manufactured firearms.
“These state laws are at odds with bedrock principles of American law, which does not hold manufacturers and sellers legally responsible for the actions of criminals and remote third parties over whom the manufacturer and seller has no control when they misuse lawfully sold products,” the group’s said in a recent statement. “No other industry in America had been targeted by such baseless, politically motivated lawsuits.”
