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In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States on Wednesday allowed a lawsuit brought by a U.S. Army veteran injured in a Taliban suicide bombing to move forward, vacating a lower court ruling that had dismissed the case.
Winston Tyler Hencely, a former Army specialist, suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries when a Taliban operative working for Fluor Corporation detonated a suicide vest at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan in 2016. Hencely is now permanently disabled as a result of the blast.
Lower courts, including the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, had ruled in favor of Fluor, holding that the claims were barred under a legal doctrine tied to wartime activity.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected a broad interpretation of “battlefield preemption,” which would have blocked state-level lawsuits connected to combat zones. He wrote that contractors are not automatically shielded from liability when their actions were not ordered or authorized by the military.
“The Fourth Circuit’s decision held Hencely’s claims preempted even though the conduct complained of was neither ordered nor authorized by the Federal Government,” the opinion stated. “No provision of the Constitution and no federal statute justifies that preemption.”
Hencely’s lawsuit alleges Fluor negligently retained and supervised the contractor responsible for the attack, and that the conduct in question violated military instructions governing operations on the base.
The majority opinion was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, argued that allowing the case to proceed improperly invites state courts to second-guess military decisions in a war zone.
“War is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution precludes that encroachment.”
The ruling sends the case back to lower courts for further proceedings and could have broader implications for lawsuits involving private contractors operating alongside the military.
