Without comment, the justices decided not to review a ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which declared on April 30 that federal law protected the manufacturers from such suits.
The appeals court had overturned a decision by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who ruled in 2005 that the suit could proceed despite protests by gun makers like Beretta U.S.A., Browning Arms, Colt Manufacturing, Glock and Smith & Wesson. The gun companies had complained that a federal law passed just two months earlier shielded them from such suits.
The law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, bans most suits against the firearms industry. A narrow exception allows suits when a gun maker or dealer has knowingly violated state or federal statutes in sales and marketing practices — by knowingly selling a weapon to someone who fails a criminal background check, for example.
In its suit, New York City contended that the gun makers had made themselves liable under that narrow exception, by failing to monitor firearms retailers closely enough and thus allowing guns to end up in the hands of criminals. Therefore, the city argued, the manufacturers had created a “condition that negatively affects the public health or safety,” and consequently were in violation of New York State’s public nuisance law.
But the federal appeals court, in the ruling that the Supreme Court declined on Monday to reconsider, said the public nuisance law did not create an exception to the federal law that would allow a suit.
“The court didn’t rule the way we wanted,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a news conference, calling the lawsuit “one part of our strategy to fight against illegal guns.”
The lawsuit did not seek monetary damages but an order directing the gun makers to more closely monitor the dealers who sold their wares — too often to criminals, the city contended.
Gun manufacturers have been sued dozens of times by city and state officials across the country, without success. But Daniel R. Vice, senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said on Monday that some individual victims of gun mayhem have won suits backed by the Brady Center against manufacturers as well as dealers.
Moreover, Mr. Vice said that a dozen cities in California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as Gary, Ind., have won suits against gun dealers, and that the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that Gary’s suit against gun manufacturers could proceed in state court.
Lawyers for New York City may have been hoping that the United States Supreme Court would hear its appeal because one member of the three-judge appeals court panel dissented last spring, arguing that the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest tribunal, should have been asked to decide whether the state public nuisance law created an exception under the federal law. But that dissent was not enough to persuade the Supreme Court to take a look at the case.
Mayor Bloomberg has made gun trafficking one of his signature issues. In 2006, the city sued 27 gun dealers in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, claiming that their lax screening practices created a public nuisance in New York City. Some dealers have reached settlements with the city, some have gone out of business, and judgments against others are pending, Eric Proshansky, the city’s lead lawyer on gun issues, said on Monday.
Mr. Proshansky said data that is admittedly “very preliminary” suggested that the suits had reduced illicit gun trafficking in the city.