The Supreme Court allowed a veteran’s lawsuit surrounding a suicide bombing to continue, vacating a previous lower court ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote the majority opinion. According to the ruling, military contractors are not automatically shielded from liability when their actions are not authorized by the military.
Former U.S. Army specialist Winston Tyler Hencely suffered life-altering injuries when a member of the Taliban working for a military contractor blew up a suicide vest. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, people cannot sue the federal government for alleged wrongdoing, such as claims “arising out of the combatant activities of the military or naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during time of war.”
Thomas argued that the defense contractor, Fluor Corporation, was sued for conduct not authorized by the military.
“In 2016, a Taliban operative working for respondent Fluor Corporation, a military contractor, carried out a suicide-bomb attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. After then-Army Specialist Winston T. Hencely confronted him, the bomber detonated his suicide vest,” the opinion explains. “As a result of the injuries he received, Hencely is now permanently disabled.”
“No provision of the Constitution and no federal statute justifies that preemption of the State’s ordinary authority over tort suits,” Thomas wrote. “Nor does any precedent of this Court command such a result. We vacate the judgment of the Fourth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
“The Constitution divides authority between the Federal Government and the States in many areas, but not when it comes to war,” Alito wrote in the dissent. “War is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government, but the Court allows state (or foreign law) to encroach on that domain. The Constitution precludes that encroachment, and therefore petitioner’s suit is preempted.”
