Daniel Defense, LLC, et al. v. Karen Lowy, Individually and as Parent and Next Friend of N. T., et al.

This Court has consistently cautioned that it is “‘substantially more difficult to establish’” Article III’s traceability requirement “where a causal relation between injury and challenged action depends upon the decision of an independent third party” not before the court. California v. Texas, 593 U.S. 659, 675 (2021) (quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 562 (1992)). The Court has also clarified that merely alleging that a third party’s injurious conduct was a “distant (even if predictable) ripple effect[]” of the defendant’s challenged action is not enough to clear that bar. FDA v. All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 383 (2024). Despite those admonitions, a divided Fourth Circuit panel here held that the victims of a horrific shooting perpetrated by a disturbed criminal can sue manufacturers of lawful and commonly owned firearms and related products on the theory that it was predictable that some disturbed individual might react to their speech promoting their lawful products in the shocking way the shooter did. The court reached that startling conclusion, moreover, even though the plaintiffs do not even allege that the shooter actually saw any of the speech they challenge. That decision not only turns Article III upside down, but deepens a circuit split over what level of causal relation is required in third-party-harm cases. The question presented is: Whether plaintiffs can satisfy the traceability requirement of Article III by alleging that the criminal acts of a third party are traceable to social media posts and other speech that they do not allege the third party ever saw.