The Supreme Court ruled this week that American service members may sue military contractors whose negligence gets them hurt or killed in combat zones, a 6-3 decision that strips away a legal shield defense firms have used for years to dodge accountability.
The case at the center of the ruling belongs to Winston Hencely, a soldier who was just 20 years old when a Taliban operative detonated a suicide bomb at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan during a Veterans Day 5K race in 2016. Five soldiers died. Seventeen more were wounded. Hencely suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries that left him permanently disabled.
He tried to stop the bomber. The Army said his intervention "likely prevented a far greater tragedy." Then, when Hencely sued the contractor responsible for base operations, the courts told him he couldn't. Until now.
What the court decided, and who dissented
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The court held that neither federal law nor the Constitution shields military contractors when their mistakes or negligence result in soldiers being injured in a combat zone, Military.com reported.
The ruling overturned the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had thrown out Hencely's lawsuit. That lower court had adopted a broad preemption theory, declaring:
"During wartime, where a private service contractor is integrated into combatant activities over which the military retains command authority, a tort claim arising out of the contractor's engagement in such activities shall be preempted."
In plain English: if a contractor worked alongside the military during wartime, you couldn't sue them. Period. The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning and cleared Hencely's suit to proceed.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Alito argued for a constitutional preemption framework:
"Because the Constitution gives the federal government exclusive authority over foreign affairs and the conduct of wars, federal law preempts all state law that substantially interferes with the Government's exercise of those powers."
That argument did not carry the day. The majority saw no reason to grant contractors blanket immunity from negligence claims simply because their work happened in a war zone.
The Bagram bombing and Fluor Corporation's role
The facts behind Hencely's lawsuit are damning for Fluor Corporation, the defense contractor that held the contract to run operations at Bagram Airfield. An Army investigation concluded that Fluor was primarily responsible for the attack. The report found the company had been negligent in hiring Ahmad Nayeb, an Afghan employee whom the Army identified as a Taliban operative, and that Fluor failed to closely supervise him.
On Veterans Day 2016, Nayeb walked toward soldiers who had gathered for the 5K race. Hencely spotted him and tried to stop and question him. Nayeb detonated his bomb anyway.
The attack was part of a broader pattern of Taliban violence targeting U.S. forces near Bagram. A separate 2015 suicide bombing near Bagram Air Base killed six U.S. troops when a Taliban attacker used an explosives-laden motorcycle to ram a joint NATO-Afghan patrol. In that incident, the bomber passed through an initial Afghan security perimeter without detection, and the blast was amplified because troops were in a narrow walled lane that concentrated shrapnel.
Among those killed in the 2015 attack were Air Force Major Adrianna Vorderbruggen and NYPD Detective Joseph Lemm, who was also serving in the Air National Guard. The New York Post reported that the bombing was described as the deadliest strike on American forces in Afghanistan that year.
These incidents underscore the persistent danger troops faced at Bagram, and the stakes when contractors responsible for security and base operations cut corners.
A decade of legal roadblocks
Hencely first filed suit against Fluor, but a federal judge in South Carolina threw the case out. The 4th Circuit upheld that dismissal, relying on a sweeping wartime preemption doctrine that effectively placed military contractors beyond the reach of injured troops.
For nearly a decade, Hencely, a young man who ran toward danger, who the Army itself credited with saving lives, was told the legal system had no room for his claim. The contractor that hired a Taliban operative walked free from civil liability.
That changed Wednesday. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Hencely's appeal and reversed the lower courts, sending the case back so it can proceed on the merits. The question now shifts from whether Hencely can sue to whether Fluor's conduct meets the legal standard for negligence.
The broader implications reach well beyond one soldier's case. The Pentagon's increasing reliance on private contractors for everything from base operations to drone programs means the ruling could expose a wide range of defense firms to liability when their negligence harms American troops.
Accountability versus immunity
The dissent's concern, that allowing state-law tort claims could interfere with the federal government's wartime authority, is not frivolous. War zones are chaotic. Commanders need contractors who can operate without second-guessing every decision in a courtroom years later.
But the majority drew a clear line. There is a difference between battlefield judgment calls and hiring a known Taliban operative to work on a base full of American soldiers. The Constitution's war powers do not require that distinction to vanish.
Military families have long known that service members face extraordinary risks every time they deploy. What they should not face is a legal system that tells them a contractor can get them maimed through gross negligence and walk away untouched.
The Feres doctrine already bars troops from suing the federal government for injuries sustained during military service. Stacking contractor immunity on top of that creates a world where the people who serve this country have fewer legal protections than a civilian who slips on a wet floor at the grocery store.
That is not a system designed to protect troops. It is a system designed to protect balance sheets.
What remains unanswered
The ruling clears Hencely's path to trial, but several questions remain open. The Supreme Court case caption and docket number were not specified in initial reporting. The full scope of the constitutional and federal-law provisions at issue beyond the court's summary has yet to be fully detailed in public coverage.
And the factual questions at the heart of the case, exactly how Fluor vetted Nayeb, what supervisory failures occurred, and what the company knew about his background, will now be litigated in the lower courts. Those answers matter not just for Hencely but for every service member who deploys to a base run by a private contractor.
The ongoing reality of American military operations abroad means this ruling arrives at a moment when contractor accountability is not an abstract legal question. It is a practical one, with lives on the line.
Conflicts in multiple theaters continue to place American personnel in harm's way. The conditions troops endure, from battlefield brutality overseas to negligent security at their own bases, demand that every entity responsible for their safety be held to account.
The right call
Winston Hencely ran toward a suicide bomber at age 20. He lost part of his skull and his future for it. The Army called him a hero. Fluor Corporation called him someone else's problem.
Six justices, spanning the court's ideological spectrum, said otherwise. They said a soldier who gets blown up because a contractor hired a Taliban fighter deserves his day in court.
When the government outsources the safety of American troops to private companies, those companies inherit the obligation along with the contract. If they can't meet it, they should answer for it, not hide behind a legal doctrine that was never meant to make negligence consequence-free.
A country that asks young men and women to stand between a bomb and their fellow soldiers owes them at least that much.
